William F. Winter and the New Mississippi: A Biography

10. Governor William Winter: A New Image for Mississippi

191 10 GOVERNOR WILLIAM WINTER A New Image for Mississippi The inaugural ceremonies for William Winter in January 1980 highlighted the intellectual and forward-looking approach the new governor brought to his office and launched an administration that would help transform the image of Mississippi in the eyes of her citizens and the rest of the nation. Winter wanted an inaugural event that would be more than “hoopla and parades.” The day before the inauguration ceremony, a symposium held at the Old Capitol—“Mississippi and the Nation in the 1980s”—featured an impressive group of accomplished Mississippians : writers Eudora Welty and Margaret Walker Alexander, businessman Doug Kenna, Catholic Bishop Bernard Law, noted physicist and University of Chicago vice-president Walter E. Massey, former University of Alabama president Frank Rose, and Time magazine writer Frank Trippett . Winter opened the proceedings by urging Mississippians to “not be afraid to explore with the depths of our intellect . . . where we are and where we have to go.” The distinguished panel explained the dimensions of what they saw as a largely hopeful road ahead. Alexander predicted that Mississippi “stands on the threshold of a decade of destiny.” Welty, in her remarks, noted that Winter’s election had “brought us hope: in our lasting—I think everlasting—identity as Mississippians, and in the full awareness and strength of that integrity, we assume, with you and your leadership, our place in the nation as 1980 begins.”1 Governor William Winter: A New Image for Mississippi 192 The installation ceremony for governor normally would have occurred in front of the State Capitol, but since that building was undergoing renovations , the event moved to a location outside the Old Capitol building. Heavy rains, however, forced the ceremony inside, to the old House of Representatives chamber, where Mississippi had seceded from the Union almost 120 years before. As a large crowd of government officials and Winter supporters crowded into the small room on the second floor and hundreds more huddled in the first-floor rotunda to listen over a public address system, Leontyne Price opened the proceedings with a stirring rendition of the National Anthem. Mississippi had never really acknowledged Price, a Metropolitan Opera singer from Laurel, as one of the state’s most accomplished artists, and before the inauguration, she had made few public appearances in Mississippi, simply because she was black.2 After taking the oath of office, Winter presented an inaugural address that laid out the high standards he would set for the government he would lead: “There will be no place in this administration for anyone who is not utterly and impeccably trustworthy in all of his affairs and relations and activities with the people of Mississippi, their property, and their possessions . There will be no place in this administration for bias or prejudice based on sectionalism or class or race or religion or anything else. There will be no place in this administration for mediocrity or shoddy performance or a half-done job.” He then reiterated a theme he had long emphasized in his political campaigns—many of Mississippi’s problems were self-inflicted: “We have wasted too much time. We have wasted too much of our substance. We have spent too many of our years, too much of our energy being against things we did not understand, being afraid of change, being suspicious of the intellectual, and being oblivious to our image and reputation.” Yet, as he had throughout his political career, Winter suggested that the ship could be righted and that Mississippi had a bright future. Accomplishing this transformation would take hard work from all the state’s citizens and would require that all Mississippians “stop selling ourselves short by not utilizing all of our people—our talented people—our creative and imaginative people. The old solutions will not do. Let us not be afraid to launch out into new areas. Let us not feel threatened by new ways of doing things.”3 Winter concluded his speech by reading a part of the inaugural address he had heard Governor Mike Conner deliver in 1932: “And if in this hour Governor William Winter: A New Image for Mississippi 193 we shall set the public welfare as the only goal of our ambition, if we shall make it the supreme object of our effort and dedicate to its achievement the best endowment of our lives, we need...