Guest Editor’s Introduction

Campaigning at the Neshoba County Fair during the 1971 lieutenant governor’s contest. Image courtesy of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History (William F. Winter and Family Papers, Z/2285).

The politics and social climate of Mississippi have experienced radical change in the past century, and for the past seven decades William Winter has been involved in creating and encouraging that change. Since entering the Mississippi House of Representatives in 1947, he has served the state of Mississippi in the roles of state tax collector, state treasurer, lieutenant governor, and governor. This special issue is dedicated to exploring Winter’s life and legacy. His most well-known and celebrated political accomplishment is inarguably his 1982 Education Reform Act, which he passed two years into his term as governor and which realized an entire wish list of reforms, most notably the creation of state-supported kindergartens. His Education Reform Act is considered the most significant piece of education legislation since the public school system began in Mississippi in 1870. As Andrew P. Mullins, Jr. claims in his introduction to Governor Winter’s The Measure of Our Days: Writings of William F. Winter, the act was the “crowning achievement of his administration.” He goes on to say that “with the passage of this legislation to restructure K–12 education, Mississippi became the leader of the education reform movement that swept the nation in the late 1980s and early 1990s.” Much ink has been spent elsewhere discussing this particular moment in Mississippi history, and while that topic is covered peripherally in most of the essays in this issue, it was decided early on that the lion’s share of the material in this volume would primarily explore the diversity of Governor Winter’s accomplishments and contributions to the state of Mississippi.

But William Winter’s contributions to his home state—he was born and raised in Grenada—reach far beyond the Mississippi State Capitol. As citizen, William Winter has served his state as a historian, as a member and president of various boards, as a college and seminary trustee, as a promoter of the arts, and as a fierce champion for racial reconciliation. It is difficult to refrain from recounting Governor Winter’s biography here, but that has been done, and done well, in a number of publications, including in the fine introduction by Andrew P. Mullins, Jr. in The Measure of Our Days: Writings of William F. Winter and in William F. Winter and the New Mississippi: A Biography, by Charles C. Bolton. In addition, in 2014 the Southern Documentary Project at the University of Mississippi produced The Toughest Job: William Winter’s Mississippi, a feature-length documentary film that focuses on the governor’s fight to pass the Education Reform Act. His biography was also briefly recounted in a comic book produced by his unsuccessful campaign for governor in 1967. That comic, re-published in its entirety, is included in this issue, and each essay here recounts at least some aspect of his life’s story.

This issue considers the life, accomplishments, and legacy of Governor Winter from a number of angles. Contributors include several historians, a professor of journalism, a college administrator and conference director, an archivist, a public policy coordinator, and an editor. Many of these essays are interconnected and can be read in conversation with one another, each adding information about topics sometimes only briefly mentioned in other essays where the primary focus lies elsewhere. Governor Winter’s legacy is a complex web of sometimes seemingly conflicting politics, and as you’ll discover, this issue does work to contextualize his political philosophy, political discourse, and governance.

Opening this issue with a contemporary interview with Governor Winter seems appropriate. In Jake McGraw’s “‘We Really Are in This Together’: A Conversation with William Winter,” the governor reflects on his political past, laments the state’s continued public and political “erosion of support for public schools,” and expounds upon his hopes for Mississippi’s future. The interview opens with a conversation on the governor’s thoughts on...