Faculty and students at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg have created a new resource for information regarding one of the university’s most famous alumnae – and one of Mississippi’s most important and history-making politicians – Edythe Evelyn Gandy.
The new E. Evelyn Gandy Encyclopedia, which can be found at https://shorturl.at/hzES7, was started by USM assistant professor of history John Winters, along with the students in his Public History in Theory and Practice class. Entries on the site are researched and written by the students, and cover topics throughout Gandy’s career in politics.
“It’s an online repository for all things Evelyn Gandy,” Winters said. “She was an alumnus of USM, she’s one of Hattiesburg’s most famous daughters … so we’ve got kind of all these colliding forces that not only speak to her history and her relationship to campus, but also her influence on politics and her thoughts on race and gender.
“The project itself is actually part of a broader push here in the School of Humanities to think about public history and to increase public history programming. The Evelyn Gandy project is giving students a real opportunity to put their research into practice, to produce something that is publicly accessible, that is edited, that is professional, that they can then put on their resumes and enter the job market with a real public history product.”
Beginning with the first encyclopedia entries posted in the fall 2023 semester, the E. Evelyn Gandy Encyclopedia is designed to explore the many facets of the history of Gandy’s home, life, and legacy, and to bring those histories into focus through the various exhibitions and articles, both digital and physical, as well as the many interactive elements of the project.
“At the moment, we are limiting (entries) to the USM community – faculty, students and whoever would like to participate in that regard,” Winters said.
Gandy was born in 1920 in Hattiesburg and graduated from Hattiesburg High School – where she served as president of the debate club and edited the school yearbook and newspaper – in 1938. After graduation, she attended Mississippi Southern College before studying law at the University of Mississippi School of Law in Oxford.
She was the only woman in her 1943 law school class and was the first woman to be elected president of the law school student body. She also was the first woman to edit the Mississippi Law Journal.
After graduating from law school, Gandy was hired as a research assistant in Washington, D.C., for then-United States Senator Theodore Bilbo. She opened her own law practice in 1947, and in 1948 was elected as treasurer of the Mississippi State Bar Association.
She served as second vice president of the Hattiesburg chapter of the National Federation of Business and Professional Women’s Clubs from 1951 to 1952, and second vice president of the state chapter in 1951. She became first vice president the next year.
She was then appointed to a two-year term on the Mississippi Congress of Parents and Teachers board of managers.
In 1959, Gandy defeated Leland S. Speed in an election for State Treasurer, making her the first woman to be elected to a Mississippi statewide constitutional office, and the second woman elected to a statewide office overall, following state tax collector Nellah Massey Bailey. In September of that year, she was appointed Assistant Attorney General of Mississippi, making her the first woman to hold that office.
Gandy also served as State Welfare Board Commissioner and on the Commission on the Status of Women before being elected to a second term as state treasurer. In 1971, she was elected as insurance commissioner.
In 1975, she defeated Republican Bill Patrick for the seat of lieutenant governor – taking in 70 percent of the vote – becoming the first woman to serve in that position in Mississippi, as well as the southern United States. She later ran a campaign for governor but was unsuccessful in that bid, and in 1983 she returned to legal practice. Gandy died at home in December 2007 after a bout with progressive supranuclear palsy.
Her body lay in state in the rotunda of the Mississippi State Capitol, the first time such an honor had been granted to a woman. She is buried in Roseland Park Cemetery in Hattiesburg.
Gandy lived off Monroe Road in Forrest County, between the Leaf and Bouie rivers.
In 2002, state officials announced a portion of Mississippi 42 would be named the Evelyn Gandy Parkway. That thoroughfare, which was completed in 2006, runs from Interstate 59 through Forrest County, where it passes over the Leaf River and U.S. 11, over the railroad tracks and into the city limits of Petal.
Because the E. Evelyn Gandy Encyclopedia is still in its beginning stages, the site does not yet have a wealth of content, but Winters expects that to change in the near future as more people contribute.
“As this project grows, I can certainly imagine that … that (university) community will grow over time,” he said. “I can’t speak right now to what that means, because it is brand new; it just launched a month ago.
“But I’m hopeful that not only with future generations of students, but also future generations of faculty – every year we’ll get a new batch of people submitting new primary sources of research on Evelyn Gandy’s life. (Hopefully) this encyclopedia will grow and get to the point where we can begin to really ask for community perspectives.”
