Katie Blount, who oversaw the opening of two state history museums in 2017 and helped coordinate a redesign of the state flag in 2020, said Tuesday that she will retire next year as director of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

Blount joined the department in 1994 as public relations coordinator. She worked as assistant to the director and deputy director for communication before being named director in 2015. She is the second woman to hold the job. Charlotte Capers led the department from 1955 to 1969.

“Embracing complex stories draws audiences and earns the trust of partners in a position to pour resources into Mississippi,” Blount said in a press release.

She said she will retire June 30, the end of the current state budget year. Blount said the department’s employees deserve credit for telling the state’s story and preserving history.

In recent years, the department has repatriated ancestral remains and burial objects to Native American tribes. It also has worked on projects including stabilization of the Windsor Ruins and revitalization of the Grand Village of the Natchez Indians, both in southwestern Mississippi, and development of a new Vicksburg Civil War Visitor Center set to open in 2028.

The Mississippi Civil Rights Museum and the Museum of Mississippi History are under one roof in downtown Jackson and are collectively called the Two Mississippi Museums. They opened during the state’s bicentennial celebration.

After legislators voted in 2020 to replace a Confederate-themed state flag that had been used since 1894, Blount joined Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and then-House Speaker Philip Gunn in a ceremony to retire the old flag to the museums.

A commission to design a new flag met that summer at the two museums, choosing a magnolia surrounded by stars and the phrase, “In God We Trust.” The design went on the November 2020 ballot, and voters overwhelmingly ratified the choice.

Reuben Anderson, a former Mississippi Supreme Court justice who chaired the flag commission and is a past president of the Department of Archives and History Board of Trustees, said in a statement to Mississippi Today on Tuesday that his message to Blount is: “Just a Big Thank You for all you have done for the Museum the City of Jackson and Mississippi.”

In June, Blount received a lifetime achievement award from the American Association for State and Local History.

Spence Flatgard, current president of the Archives and History board, praised Blount’s work.

“Katie is universally respected by her peers and state leaders,” Flatgard said in the department’s press release. “Her love for public service and for Mississippians has helped us tell our story to schoolchildren and to presidents.”