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Former Gov. Phil Bryant has constantly been in the news in recent weeks thanks to the reporting of Mississippi Today’s Anna Wolfe about his involvement in the welfare fraud scandal that engulfed the Department of Human Services that he used to oversee.

But back in the mid-2000s, then-Auditor Phil Bryant was in the news nearly daily regarding a different instance of government fraud: he was investigating the Mississippi Beef Plant scandal.

The Republican Bryant, a former deputy sheriff, had been projected then as a hard-charging investigator attempting to get to the bottom of how Mississippi leaders spent $55 million in state funds to develop a beef processing plant in rural Yalobusha County that stayed open for just three months — little more than a blink of an eye — before closing for good.

Today, Bryant is a former governor who says he has no idea how at least $77 million in federal grant funds intended to help the state’s poor climb out of poverty were misspent by his Department of Human Services. People who worked for Bryant are facing felony criminal charges related to misspending the funds, but officials haven’t accused Bryant of wrongdoing. Since Mississippi Today’s series published, however, some are calling for Bryant to be investigated.

Bryant said he was not paying attention to his text messages — obtained by Mississippi Today and first published in “The Backchannel” investigation — that showed former Southern Miss and NFL quarterback Brett Favre informing the governor that grant funds were funding a private drug venture that the Hall of Famer had invested in.

When Bryant later received texts about possibly receiving stock in the drug company in exchange for his help while in office, the governor responded, “Cannot till January 15th,” referring to his first day out of office. “But would love to talk then. This is the type of thing I love to be a part of. Something that save lives…” 

Shortly after leaving office and after setting up a private consulting firm, Bryant again received the stock offer from drug company leaders. He replied: “Sounds good. Where would be the best place to meet. I am now going to get on it hard…”

During his beef plant investigation in 2004-05, Bryant chastised then-Agriculture Commissioner Lester Spell for not comprehending the foolhardy nature of the state investing in the beef plant.

Steve Holland, then a colorful state representative from Lee County, boldly took credit, saying he and fellow northeast Mississippi representative, Billy McCoy, a former House speaker, “birthed” the idea of the beef plant during Natchez Trace commutes to the Capitol. Holland said they believed the project could be a Nissan Plant for rural Mississippi, referring to the auto manufacturing plant that had opened in Canton near Jackson thanks in part to significant state incentives.

Holland’s statement claiming credit was played on a loop on conservative radio. The same radio station decked out a recreational vehicle in beef plant paraphernalia and circled the Capitol reminding people of the fiasco. They said it would be only a matter of time before an ongoing federal investigation, aided by none other than Auditor Bryant, brought charges against those Democrats who “birthed” the beef plant.

During one radio interview at the time, Bryant said, “You know it is always difficult for me to talk about, but if I remember a report published where the U.S. attorney had told … Judge Biggers that we can expect more indictments, or another indictment would be forthcoming soon … Like I said, this is not over. Every day I’m spending time talking with the U.S. Attorney’s office as we continue this program.”

In the end, a handful of the beef plant contractors served time in prison. They pleaded guilty to embezzling state money and cutting corners that resulted in an already questionable project never having a chance. There were two contractors who pleaded guilty to essentially making campaign contributions to former Gov. Ronnie Musgrove with the expectation of receiving favorable treatment.

Bryant and the beef plant stayed in the news with people speculating that indictments of public officials were just around the corner. But federal prosecutors never charged Musgrove with any quid pro quo. None of the state lawmakers that conservative radio hosts said would face charges were ever charged with a crime.

Then-state Rep. Jamie Franks, D-Mooreville, tried to flip the script on the beef plant in his unsuccessful 2007 campaign against Bryant for lieutenant governor. Franks pointed out that McCoy had inserted language in the legislation “birthing” the beef plant an appropriation of $50,000 for Bryant’s office to monitor the program. Only $10,000 of the funds were spent, said Franks, who accused Bryant of only becoming interested in the project after it abruptly closed days after it opened.

“He simply didn’t do his job,” Franks said.

Bryant countered that he warned people early on of the infeasibility of the project.

At any rate, the facility the state built for the beef plant has now been utilized for nearly 15 years. Frozen food manufacturer Ajinomoto employs about 500 Mississippians at the site — maybe not a Nissan plant, but a significant number of jobs in rural Yalobusha County.

It is difficult to imagine any positive results will come from the welfare scandal and that misspending of $77 million. And today, the statewide conservative network that broadcast so much speculation about pending charges in the beef plant scandal is radio silent on the new revelations in the welfare scandal.

The post Some want Phil Bryant investigated for welfare scandal. He used to be the one doing the investigating. appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Between 40 to 50 protesters gathered on the steps of the Mississippi State Capitol building Friday night to rally for the preservation of abortion rights in America. 

Advocates organized pro-choice protests across the country this week following the explosive leak by Politico of a draft opinion that indicated the U.S. Supreme Court is ready to overturn Roe v. Wade, potentially setting the stage for the procedure to become illegal in Mississippi and many other states.

 The opinion stemmed from the Mississippi case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization which centers around a challenge to the state’s 15-week abortion ban.

If the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, Mississippi’s 2007 “trigger law” banning abortion in the state would go into effect. The only exceptions would be  cases where necessary for the preservation of the mother’s life or where the pregnancy was caused by rape” and a criminal charge has been filed with law enforcement. 

Every speaker at the protest emphasized that regardless of what the Supreme Court decides, there will still be a need for activists to push for legalization and work to make reproductive health care accessible.

The organizations that attended and organized the protest were 601 For Period Equity, Mississippi In Action, Immigrant Alliance For Justice and Equity, Democratic Socialists of America and Party for Socialism and Liberation. 

The protests first speaker, Meghan, shared the story of her being forced to carry a pregnancy to term after she was raped. The assault occurred while she was trying to jog two miles back to her home after her car broke down. 

Even though Meghan took a Plan B pill after her assault, she became pregnant.

“In my shock and trauma haze, it took me a good while to realize or realistically accept what was happening to my body,” Meghan said. 

When Meghan realized she was pregnant, she had already passed the 16-week limit on when abortions are performed in Mississippi. She said looking at her growing belly was  a constant reminder of the worst thing that had ever happened to her. 

“The nightmare is ever present,” Meghan said. “I couldn’t help but think this would have never happened if I had just been able to get a safe abortion.”

Other speakers at the protest emphasized that the heaviest burdens in a post-Roe Mississippi would lie on the shoulders of Black and brown women in the state. 

Lorena Quiroz, executive director of Immigrant Alliance For Justice and Equity, a progressive immigrant rights advocacy organization, said anti-abortion activists and politicians who claim to be pro-life while not supporting access to health care for undocumented people are hypocritical. 

“If you really wanted healthy babies then you would be extending health care benefits to all women, but they’re not… all they want to do is control our bodies,” Quiroz said. 

In Mississippi, pregnant people who are undocumented may be eligible for health care coverage through Medicaid during their births. They cannot receive any public prepartum or postpartum benefits. 

Quiroz also pointed out that many of the undocumented women who come to the U.S. from Central America are fleeing physical and sexual violence in their own countries. 

“They flee to a country they think is supposed to protect them, but they’re not protected,” Quiroz said. 

Derenda Hancock, who acts as a coordinator for the Pink House Defenders, a volunteer group that safely escorts women in and out of their appointments at the state’s only abortion clinic, said she was surprised by the lack of anti-abortion protestors this week Only one person she escorted into the clinic this week even mentioned the leak, she said.

“You’d be terribly surprised by how many people come there (Jackson Women’s Health Organization) without knowing any of this (Dobbs case) is going on,” Hancock said. 

Though upset by the leak, it was what Hancock expected.

“The fact that it leaked was a big surprise, but what they leaked was not a big surprise. There’s not a win here,” Hancock said. 

Hancock said in a post-Roe Mississippi, Jackson Women’s Health Organization will likely close down, and the Pink House Defenders will cease to exist. However, her advocacy group We Engage, which confronts anti-abortion protesters, will continue its work. Likely, this will look like organizing in states where abortion remains legal, but anti-abortion activism continues. 

“There are no safe states. There are only temporarily safe states,” Hancock said. 

The post Following Supreme Court leak, pro-choice activists rally in Jackson appeared first on Mississippi Today.

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Last month, the Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees shocked faculty across Mississippi when it voted, without discussion, to modify criteria in some of its tenure. 

Faculty, who had no formal input on the changes, say the revised criteria are vague and could be easily used by presidents to target outspoken or marginalized colleagues in Mississippi, particularly considering that IHL used similar language to oust liberal professors during the civil rights movement. 

As a job protection, tenure ensures that faculty can’t be fired without just cause. IHL’s policy changes create new criteria that university presidents can use to decide whether to award tenure at the end of the six-year, rigorous review process, including a faculty member’s “collegiality,” “effectiveness, accuracy and integrity in communications,” and “contumacious conduct,” a factor that was previously only included in the board’s dismissal policy.  

“It’s not clear what these terms mean in practice,” said Brian LaPierre, the outgoing president of University of Southern Mississippi’s faculty senate. “They’ll have to be defined.” 

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary says contumacious means “stubbornly disobedient” or “rebellious.” The IHL has included the word in employment contracts for years as a reason a faculty member could be dismissed. But how does IHL define the term? 

In an email, spokesperson Caron Blanton wrote the board does not define contumacious conduct in its policies, but that “it is based on the standard definition of the word and aligns with language in tenured and tenure-track contracts.”

As a reason to dismiss a faculty member, contumacious conduct is a somewhat rare standard in higher education. In a 2005 survey, the American Association of University Professors found that the term was included in the dismissal policies of just two colleges. 

The term has a long history in Mississippi. Ever since the Legislature created the IHL in 1943, the board has had “the power and authority to terminate any such contract at any time for malfeasance, inefficiency or contumacious conduct, but never for political reasons.” 

‘The time has come to fumigate some of our college staffs’

In late 1963, a year after James Meredith enrolled at University of Mississippi, James Silver was in North Carolina to give a speech on what he called the state’s “closed society.” Silver, a white man born in New York, had taught at UM for 22 years. In that time, he earned a reputation as “a threat to the status quo” in Mississippi due to his support for minimum wage laws, criticism of the Confederacy, and a false suspicion that he was Jewish. 

In North Carolina, Silver delivered an acerbic address, telling the audience that white supremacy was so calcified in Mississippi, it had created “a climate where non-conformity is forbidden, where the white man is not free, where he does not dare to express a deviating opinion without looking over his shoulder.” 

Almost immediately, segregationist politicians condemned Silver’s talk and called on the IHL board to fire him. A few days later, John Bell Williams, a U.S. representative, told the Mississippi L.P. Gas Dealers Association that “the time has come to fumigate some of our college staffs and get those who will teach Americanism and not foreign ideologies.”

The IHL board was limited in how it could respond to these calls. Just two years earlier, UM had denied tenure to William Murphy, a law professor who was a member of the American Civil Liberties Union. The law school almost lost its accreditation, and following the backlash, the board created its first state-wide tenure policies. If IHL fired Silver, it would be risking accreditation all over again. 

Nonetheless, five months later, wire reports announced the board believed it had found a way to fire Silver that “would not be taken on political grounds.” The board undertook an investigation, hiring private detectives to follow Silver and ultimately landed on 15 reasons to fire Silver for “contumacious conduct.” 

The reasons were primarily statements Silver made in his address about the riot at UM when a segregationist mob erupted in violence and killed two people after Meredith enrolled. The board also asked Silver to account for his activities on the night of the riot, and to provide a list of his “endeavors in recruiting new doctoral candidates, students and faculty members.” 

It seemed the charges were set to go through, until the board abandoned them just a few months later in 1964 by allowing Silver to take a leave of absence to teach at University of Notre Dame. 

Faculty at other universities in Mississippi weren’t as lucky. That same year, Alcorn State University’s president fired two faculty members, Paul and Bessie Taylor, for contumacious conduct. The Taylors believed they were targeted because they were members of the American Association of University Professors, an advocacy organization, historian Joy Ann Williamson-Lott wrote in her book “Jim Crow Campus.” 

The AAUP complained, but the Taylors never got their jobs back, because the board backed the president. 

“In other words, the board cared enough about the status and reputation of the state’s white flagship public institution to appease accreditation boards,” Wiliamson-Lott wrote, but that same concern did not extend to faculty at the Black colleges. 

‘What defines collegially? Is it me being nice to you?’

The new policies also remind many faculty of a more recent firing at UM. In late 2020, the university suddenly terminated Garrett Felber, a tenure-track professor in the history department, because he did not sufficiently communicate with his chair, Inside Higher Ed reported. Provost Noel Wilkin told the outlet the decision to not renew Felber’s contract was based on “multiple instances where Dr. Felber refused to speak” with his chair, which “made it impossible to maintain a productive working relationship.” 

Felber, who settled with the university last year, has said he never refused to talk with his chair. He maintains he was targeted for criticizing administrative decisions and because he organized for prison abolition. Felber noted that just a few months before he was fired, his chair had praised his research and service to the campus. 

Tenure is traditionally awarded based on three criteria: Teaching, research and service to the university. These standards are usually elaborated on in handbooks that universities create with input from faculty. For instance, a handbook might define a faculty member’s “service” to the university as participating in the faculty senate or advising a student organization. 

Some Mississippi universities address collegiality in their handbooks but do not require it as a criteria for tenure. At University of Southern Mississippi, candidates for tenure are evaluated on their collegiality but only in the context of the three traditional areas. 

Jackson State University appears to be the only school that considers “professional collegiality” as a specific criteria for awarding tenure. Jackson State defines collegiality in forms faculty use to apply for tenure by listing a number of criteria, such as showing up to class on time and participating in university functions like convocation. 

Still, some faculty say even those standards are slippery.  

“What defines collegially? Is it me being nice to you? Is it me being collaborative across departments? It’s the most vague of all of the areas of which you are examined,” said Robert Luckett, a tenured history professor and the director of Jackson State University’s Margaret Walker Center. “I don’t think that anyone has taken it seriously as something that impacts your actual promotion and tenure.” 

The AAUP has never approved of “collegiality” as a reason to fire or not grant tenure to a faculty member, because of the possibility for abuse, said Greg Scholtz, the director of the organization’s academic freedom department. 

The organization often advises faculty who are negotiating with their universities on language in handbooks or contracts. Scholtz said that in cases where universities have insisted on including “collegiality” as a criteria for tenure, the AAUP asks that the factor be evaluated the way USM does: In conjunction with a candidate’s teaching, research or service, not on its own. 

Last week, PEN America and FIRE, nonprofits that advocate for free speech in higher education, sent a joint letter that called on the IHL to roll back the policy changes. It’s unlikely the board will do that, which means universities will need to incorporate these policies into handbooks in the fall. 

KB Melear, a University of Mississippi professor who specializes in employment law, said it could take a lawsuit for faculty to get better definitions of the new criteria.

Though if a faculty member did sue over the new “collegiality” criteria, it’s likely the university would win the case. A 2010 law review article co-authored by Mary Ann Connell, the former general counsel for UM, found that the courts sided with the university “almost every time” a faculty member claimed collegiality was used to discriminate against them. 

“The way that collegiality has been viewed by the courts, it’s been more toward your work environment and productivity and relationships,” Melear said. “I would think it would be quite easy to litigate that, and I think probably that might happen.” 

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OCEAN SPRINGS — Just a few hours before a congressional candidate’s forum was slated to begin on Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Steven Palazzo’s staff called event organizers and said he couldn’t make it because he had “meetings dealing with national security.”

But as all six of Palazzo’s Republican challengers were still on stage sharing their ideas with the public on Tuesday evening, the incumbent posted a Facebook photo of himself with his son at a restaurant in Starkville. It is unclear if national security was among the topics Palazzo discussed with his college-aged son over dinner Tuesday evening.

Palazzo, the 10-year incumbent congressman representing Mississippi’s 4th District, will be on the June 7 primary ballot for the Republican nomination to Congress. Six GOP challengers — including several well-known Gulf Coast figures — have lined up to unseat him, in large part because of an ongoing House Ethics Committee investigation into allegations that Palazzo illegally misspent hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign funds for personal use.

READ MORE: Ethics report: ‘Substantial’ evidence of Rep. Palazzo wrongdoing

Palazzo appears to be testing the limits of incumbency — and lack of voter engagement in a sleepy election cycle — as a means to get reelected. One month from Election Day, it’s difficult to see signs he’s actually running.

Palazzo has skipped both candidate forums this cycle, and his opponents and attendees alike are taking advantage of it. Multiple candidates sharply critiqued his absence on stage Tuesday evening, and members of the audience jeered when it was announced he would not be attending.

The congressman notoriously holds few public events since he was first elected to Congress in 2010. During his first term in Congress, some constituents in south Mississippi began referring to him as “No-Show Palazzo.” That nickname has been regularly tossed around by his opponents on the campaign trail this year.

The congressman hasn’t always shown his face in Washington in recent months, either. He was one of several congressional Republicans to file a 2020 lawsuit against Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to stop proxy voting — the process by which members have other congressmen cast votes for them when they are absent.

“By signing on to this lawsuit, I am committing to refrain from lending my vote via proxy or placing a vote via proxy on behalf of another member,” Palazzo said in a 2020 press release. “When South Mississippians sent me to Washington, they placed their confidence and trust in me, not a proxy vote.”

But since he issued that press release, Palazzo has voted by proxy at least 66 times, according to the conservative public policy organization Ripon Society. By comparison, neither of Mississippi’s other two Republican congressmen, Reps. Trent Kelly and Michael Guest, has voted by proxy once in the same timeframe.

Jackson County Sheriff Mike Ezell and Hancock County businessman Clay Wagner, two of Palazzo’s GOP primary challengers, have raised more money in 2022 than Palazzo. Ezell and Wagner have started running television ads in the Biloxi and Hattiesburg television markets, while Palazzo is not yet on air.

Ezell, Wagner, and the other GOP primary candidates state Sen. Brice Wiggins, Kidron Peterson, Raymond Brooks and Carl Boyanton have attended both candidate forums. 

“Congressman Palazzo is not only campaigning but is also busy doing the job he was elected to do,” said Justin Brassell, Palazzo’s campaign manager. “He was in Tupelo (on Tuesday) at General Atomics and stopped in Starkville on the way home. He was making other official visits around the district (on Wednesday).”

Brassell continued: “He’s happy to campaign on his conservative voting record and work on the Appropriations Committee that helps maintain Mississippi’s key role in homeland security and our national defense. When Republicans win a majority this fall, he will be in a key senior leadership position on Appropriations to continue that important work for our state.”

But the reelection his campaign manager predicts is very much in question thanks in large part to a months-long investigation into Palazzo’s questionable campaign spending.

Mississippi Today previously reported that Palazzo used campaign funds to pay himself and his former spouse nearly $200,000 through companies they own — including thousands to cover the mortgage, maintenance and upgrades to a riverfront home Palazzo owned and wanted to sell. A Mississippi Today report also questioned thousands in Palazzo campaign spending on swanky restaurants, sporting events, resort hotels, golfing and gifts.

A congressional ethics report made public in March 2021 claimed that Palazzo misspent campaign and congressional funds, and says it found evidence he used his office to help his brother and used staff for personal errands and services.

The report says it found “substantial” evidence that Palazzo used his position and office to help his brother, Kyle Palazzo. The actions in question included Rep. Palazzo potentially using his official office and resources to contact the assistant secretary of the Navy to help his brother’s efforts to re-enlist, and paying his brother nearly $24,000 over 10 months as a “political coordinator.”

The report also said the Office of Congressional Ethics found evidence that Palazzo used congressional staffers for personal errands, such as two staffers spending an entire workday looking for iron-on clothing labels for Palazzo’s children’s clothes before they departed for summer camp.

The House Ethics Committee investigation of Palazzo is ongoing. The committee could dismiss the allegations, offer its own rebuke of Palazzo, or pass the matter off for criminal investigation to the U.S. Department of Justice. 

READ MORE: Is Congressman Steven Palazzo’s campaign account a slush fund?

The post ‘No-Show Palazzo’: Congressman, still under investigation, absent from campaign trail appeared first on Mississippi Today.

If Gov. Tate Reeves’ recent vetoes of 10 projects throughout the state totaling about $27 million stand, the power of Mississippi’s executive branch of government could again be expanded.

In 2020, the Mississippi Supreme Court expanded the governor’s authority when it upheld two partial vetoes by the governor despite multiple Supreme Court cases dating back to the 1890s that seemed to greatly limit that authority.

The partial vetoes of House Bill 1353 made by Reeves last week could enhance again the governor’s authority.

READ MORE: Gov. Tate Reeves blocks state funding for major Jackson park improvement, planetarium

As Reeves pointed out in his veto message, Section 73 of the Mississippi Constitution states plainly that “the governor may veto parts of any appropriations bill, and approve parts of the same, and the portion approved shall be law.”

Before the 2020 landmark Supreme Court ruling, the high court had said the governor could not veto what are known as conditions and purposes of appropriations bills, but instead had to veto the entire section allocating a sum of money to an agency.

The 2020 ruling allowed the governor to veto those purposes and conditions. Those purposes and conditions in the 2020 vetoes were $2 million for a hospital in Tate County and $6 million for a program to try to combat health care disparities in the state.

This year it appears the governor is again vetoing purposes and conditions of appropriations bills as the Supreme Court in 2020 interpreted the Constitution to allow. But the bill the governor partially vetoed last week — HB1353 — by legislative parlance is not an appropriations bill. It is a general bill, and nowhere in the Constitution is the governor given the authority to partially veto general bills.

“We take the position these vetoes are improper and not permitted under the law. That is something we are going to be looking at,” House Speaker Philip Gunn, R-Clinton, said on WJTV’s Mississippi Insight news program.

Gunn continued: “… I am not aware of any provision under the law that allows the governor to veto partially a general bill. He has to veto all of it or none of it … That may be more than people want to understand but there are differences in the types of bills we have up here.”

The Constitution provides a definition of an appropriations bill. Gunn and others said the bill Reeves partially vetoed does not meet the definition of an appropriations bill. Throughout the legislative process, House Bill 1353 was voted on as if it was a general bill, meaning it had a lower threshold of votes needed to pass.

On the other hand, another Reeves partial veto — $50 million for improvements to the University of Mississippi Medical Center — was in an appropriations bill. The bill is the appropriations bill for the University Medical Center.

READ MORE: Gov. Tate Reeves vetoes $50 million appropriation to UMMC

But whether the Supreme Court justices, whom some observers say displayed a surprising lack of understanding of the legislative process in their 2020 decision, will understand the distinction between general and appropriations bills or even care about the distinction is questionable.

After all, to a “lay person,” HB1353 looks like an appropriations bill. It contains a list of projects throughout the state that received a legislative appropriation.

But Sen. Hob Bryan, D-Amory, who filed and won a lawsuit in the early 1990s challenging the partial veto authority of then-Gov. Kirk Fordice, said the money for the projects was appropriated in another bill that was passed and signed into law earlier by Reeves.

The money was appropriated, from the legislative standpoint, in the appropriations bill for the Department of Finance and Administration into various accounts.

The bill Reeves vetoed simply transfers the already appropriated funds from DFA to the various projects.

“We’re just transferring money from one account to another, or from one purpose to another,” Bryan said. “That is not an appropriation. That is a transfer. I understand that to be what they are arguing and will not be subject to the line item.”

Besides strengthening the governor’s authority, the 2020 ruling also reversed previous rulings that said legislators had “standing” to file a lawsuit challenging the partial veto.

The Supreme Court ruled the lawsuit had to be filed by someone or some entity that had been impacted by the partial veto. For instance, the governmental entities and other involved in the development of the recreational area at LeFleur’s Bluff State Park would have the authority to challenge the governor’s veto of $13 million for that project.

Bryan said the worst part of the 2020 ruling was stripping legislators of the authority to challenge the vetoes.

Bryan said it made sense, both legally and practically, for the Supreme Court to settle the dispute between legislators and the executive over partial vetoes.

“We have a Supreme Court that is liable to do anything completely incompetent,” Bryan said.

READ MORE: Amid vetoes, Gov. Tate Reeves lets pay raises for elected officials pass

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Bobby Cleveland – Rick’s brother and Tyler’s uncle – leaves an amazing journalistic legacy, plus legions of fans and friends. Rick and Tyler discuss what made Bobby such an unforgettable character, using clips from a Christmas podcast in 2021.

Stream all episodes here.

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Katie Blount, executive director of the state Department of Archives and History, said that the Two Mississippi Museums “stand at the intersection of Gov. William Winter’s three greatest passions: history, education and racial justice.”

It was at those museums — the civil rights and history museums in downtown Jackson on Tuesday — that Mississippi paid its final respects to Winter, the 58th governor and conscience of the state. Winter died in December 2020, a few months before his wife and partner of 70 years, Elise, passed away.

READ MORE: ‘One of the greatest Mississippians’: Former Gov. William Winter remembered by friends, dignitaries

Former President Bill Clinton, whose terms as governor of Arkansas partially coincided with Winter’s tenure as Mississippi governor in the early 1980s, was among the about 800 on hand Tuesday to honor both the Winters at the Two Mississippi Museums.

“We were neighbors and so much more,” said Clinton, who at age 75 is about 22 years younger than Winter was when he died. Clinton went on to say that the Winters “had the most unusual balance. They were highly intelligent, highly energetic and openly ambitious and as good as gold because their ambition was for something worth being ambitious about.”

The Winter family decided not to hold a public service for the Winters during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. But it would have been a tragedy to completely forgo such an event considering the Winters were part of the fabric of Mississippi for more than half of a century.

Winter was elected to the Mississippi House in 1947 and later served in a litany of statewide offices, culminating with his tenure as governor. It was during that tenure that his crowning achievement was realized: the Education Reform Act of 1982, which enacted public kindergartens and a host of other improvements to the state’s schools.

As Clinton pointed out, Winter lost two elections for governor before finally capturing the seat. Those losses were attributable in large part to Winter’s moderation on the issue of race.

“When we were governors, it was rare for someone who was actually winning (elections) to stick his neck out on civil rights and have a good time doing it,” said Clinton, referencing that “Bill,” as he called Winter, always remained upbeat despite those two losses. He attributed Winter’s positive disposition to Elise.

While the Winters had a long political career, they might have been as influential after leaving office. Elise was active in Habitat for Humanity and played a key role in the development of the program in both the state and nation.

Republican Haley Barbour, who served as governor in the 2000s, told of how Winter and Reuben Anderson, who was the state’s first Black Supreme Court justice and later served with Winter on the Board of Archives and History, brought him the plan to develop the Two Mississippi Museums. The plan was approved and funded by the Legislature during Barbour’s tenure as governor.

Barbour also recounted asking the Democratic Winter to serve on a recovery board after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Mississippi Gulf Coast in 2005. He said Winter played a key role on that board “because he loved Mississippi.”

It was after leaving politics that Winter became synonymous with racial reconciliation. The Winter Institute of Racial Reconciliation was developed, and he apologized personally for some of his past rhetoric, though he was universally viewed a moderate on racial issues throughout his tenure in politics.

Anderson said when the state flag containing the Confederate battle emblem was finally taken down in the summer of 2020 and Anderson symbolically accepted the old flag as chair of the Archives and History Board, his old friend “was on my mind.” Anderson said the flag would not have been taken down if not for the work Winter had started many years ago.

At the event, Spence Flatgard, the current president of the Archives and History Board, which Winter served on for 50 years, announced that $5 million had been raised for the William and Elise Winter Education Endowment to ensure that all children across the state would have an opportunity to tour the Two Mississippi Museums.

Blount said the Winters believed “all of us, especially our children, must understand who we are and where we come from. And let us be lifted by (the Winters’) hope, by their faith that in Winter’s words, ‘We use our history to develop a more stable, more just society.’”

READ MORE: William Winter, former Mississippi governor who ushered in education reform, dies at 97

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