Iris Faircloth Blitch; Former Congresswoman

Iris Faircloth Blitch, 81, who represented Georgia’s 8th District in Congress from 1955-1963, and was one of the 95 Southern senators and representatives who signed the “Southern Manifesto” in 1956, pledging to work to reverse the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 decision outlawing racial segregation in the nation’s schools. She was only the fourth woman to represent Georgia in Congress when she won the 1954 Democratic primary, which was tantamount to election in the state’s one-party politics of that era. Mrs. Blitch declined to seek reelection in 1962 for health reasons, and two years later she left the Democratic Party and supported Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater. In San Diego on Thursday of a heart attack.