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Published: December 2003
Robert Lowry occupied the office of governor for eight years and was Mississippi’s first governor to remain in office for two consecutive four-year terms. He was first elected in 1881 and re-elected in 1885.
Published: December 2003
Anselm McLaurin, the oldest of eight brothers and the father of ten children, was the last Confederate veteran to be elected governor of Mississippi. At the age of sixteen, he enlisted in the Third Mississippi Artillery and became well-known for his daring and bravery during the Civil War.
Published: January 2004
Governor Andrew Longino was a pivotal figure in Mississippi history. He was the first governor elected after the American Civil War who was not a Confederate veteran, and he was the last governor to be nominated by a state party convention.
Published: January 2004
In 1903, the people of Mississippi nominated the candidates for all public offices, from the governor down to the local constable, in a popular primary election. The first governor elected under Mississippi’s new primary law was James K.
Published: January 2004
Shortly before Governor Edmond F. Noel’s inauguration on January 21, 1908, several Jackson businessmen recommended the sale of the Governor’s Mansion and the commercial development of the city block which the 1842 mansion occupied.
Published: August 2004
Governor Earl Brewer’s inauguration was an unusually festive occasion and attracted the largest crowd in the state's history up to that time. Railroad companies offered reduced rates and thousands of people came to Jackson from all over the state.
Published: January 2004
Although he was only five-feet, two-inches tall, Theodore G. Bilbo, in life as in legend, is a towering figure who stalked across the pages of Mississippi history.
Published: January 2004
While a student at the University of Mississippi, Lee Russell was a leader in the movement to abolish Greek fraternities.
Published: January 2004
Although Henry Lewis Whitfield served in the state’s highest office, he is perhaps best known for his career in public education and his many contributions to the development of Mississippi’s public school system.
Published: January 2004
Dennis Murphree was governor of Mississippi on two separate occasions but was never elected to the office. In 1927 while serving as lieutenant governor, he became governor following the death of Henry Whitfield, and in 1943, he again succeeded to the office upon the death of Paul B.
Published: January 2004
During the depths of the worst depression in American history, Martin S. Conner was inaugurated governor of Mississippi on January 19, 1932. “We assume our duties,” he said, “when men are shaken with doubt and with fear, and many are wondering if our very civilization is about to crumble.”
Published: January 2004
Hugh Lawson White was perhaps the wealthiest man to hold the office of governor in Mississippi’s history, certainly in modern times. An industrialist and lumberman, White served two nonconsecutive terms and was among the oldest men elected governor.
Published: January 2004
During his 1931 and 1935 races for governor, Paul Burney Johnson Sr. called himself the “Champion of the Runt Pig People,” and in his successful campaign of 1939, he promised to inaugurate several New Deal measures in the state of Mississippi.
Published: January 2004
Before his election to the state's highest office in 1943, Thomas L. Bailey served twenty-four years in the Mississippi House of Representatives. For twelve years, he was Speaker of the House.
Published: January 2004
When the Democratic Party nominated Harry S. Truman and adopted a strong civil rights platform in 1948, Southern Democrats organized the States’ Rights Democratic Party. Better known as “Dixiecrats,” the Southern Democrats nominated Governor Fielding L.
Published: January 2004
Not since George Poindexter had there been a Mississippi governor with a broader range of political experience than Governor James Plemon Coleman. He was also one of the few governors in the 20th century elected in his first campaign for the office.
Published: January 2004
The office of governor is the only public office Ross Barnett ever held and the only political office for which he ever campaigned. He is also one of only two Mississippians who ran for the office four times.
Published: January 2004
When Paul B. Johnson, Jr. was inaugurated as Mississippi’s fifty-fourth governor on January 21, 1964, he became the only son of a Mississippi governor to follow his father to the state’s highest office.
Published: January 2004
John Bell Williams’s political career took an unusual route to the office of governor. Most politicians first run for state or local office and then use those offices to launch a national career. Williams took the opposite approach.
Published: November 2011
In the early 1970s after the Civil Rights Movement had run its course and had brought enormous changes to the South, a group of young and progressive southern governors attracted national attention.
Published: January 2004
Cliff Finch campaigned for governor in 1975 on the promise of more and better-paying jobs for Mississippi’s working men and women.
Published: January 2004
For all of William Winter’s many contributions to the state of Mississippi, he will best be remembered for the Education Reform Act of 1982. After the legislature failed to enact his educational reforms during the regular session in 1982, Governor Winter called a special session.
Published: January 2014
While serving as attorney general of the state of Mississippi in the early 1980s, Bill Allain filed a suit asking the Mississippi Supreme Court to separate the functions of the executive and legislative branches of state government, especially in the budgetary process.
Published: August 2009
Although Ray Mabus was the youngest governor in America at the time of his inauguration on January 12, 1988, he had accumulated an impressive record of public service and academic achievements.
Published: September 2004
In his first campaign for any public office in 1991, Kirk Fordice was elected Mississippi’s first Republican governor in 118 years. In his successful campaign for re-election in 1995, he became the first Mississippi governor to succeed himself in more than a century.