People rarely realize when they’re making history. It’s only through the lens of time that things come into focus.
That insight comes from the handwritten letters that show a person’s state of mind; the notes in the margins that show thought processes; and drafts never published that highlight ideas considered but ultimately discarded. These are the personal, political and profoundly human stories preserved in the Mississippi Political Collection on the third floor of the Mississippi State University Mitchell Memorial Library.
These firsthand documents don’t show history; they show history in the making—an important aspect of putting historic events and decisions into context.
Established in 1999 with Sen. John C. Stennis’ donation of his personal and professional papers, the MPC now houses more than 100 unique collections and totals roughly 12,000 boxes of political history.
A 1928 Mississippi State graduate, Stennis is one of the university’s most storied graduates. His papers, which range from college recommendation letters to handwritten notes of the Watergate hearings, capture an expansive era of American political history.
“He had one of the most massive congressional collections in America and we have original, primary sources from that time,” said Kate Gregory, director of the Mississippi Political Collection. “You can really sit down and see what Stennis thought.”
Totaling more than 4,000 cubic feet of materials, Stennis’ collection chronicles American politics from the Magnolia State’s perspective, touching on the Marshall Plan after WWII, the Vietnam War, civil rights legislation, the Reagan presidency and the Iran-Contra hearings.
“We have a little bit from before he went to Congress, but the lion’s share of his collection is from his 42 years in office,” Gregory said. “In his papers alone, you can study American political history through the lens of Mississippi’s representative.”
Creating a tradition
Stennis’ gift set a precedent for other public servants, sparking a tradition of Bulldog alumni entrusting their papers to their alma mater. Since that donation, the collection has expanded to include archives from notable alumni including G.V. “Sonny” Montgomery, Chip Pickering, Alan Nunnelee and Mike Espy, among others. However, the MPC accepts and holds donations from non-graduates as well.
“Through these files, you really see how the political system works, not just from the people sitting in elected office, but from the people behind the scenes,” Gregory said. “The correspondence, drafts, committee notes—this is how the sausage gets made.”
In Montgomery’s papers, researchers can trace the entire evolution of his work on the G.I. Bill.
“You can literally see how a bill becomes a law,” Gregory said. “He started on that legislation in the 1970s and it took multiple congresses, committees and presidents before it passed.”
Gregory explained that the MPC exists for several reasons, but the largest goal is to preserve Mississippi’s political story as a public record.
“We’re in the business of people, not parties,” Gregory said. “You don’t have to win your election to be a part of this story. We’re not just documenting the players—we’re documenting the game. I want the whole, full scope—as complete a history as we can maintain. We put a lot of effort into getting all our collections publicly available and online as fast and as high-quality as we can because people deserve to know what we have. It’s here for them.”
Holding history
Located at the heart of the land-grant university, the MPC serves as an asset to researchers and historians, as well as a classroom.
Brian Pugh, lecturer and public service mentor with the Judy and Bobby Shackouls Honors College, makes the MPC a cornerstone of his courses.
“If it pertains to Congress or the state legislature, there’s a 100% chance I’m taking my students there,” Pugh said. “I’ve been teaching in the honors college for five years now, and we’ve used it every year.”
Pugh, who also serves as executive director of the Stennis Center for Public Service, first used the MPC as an undergraduate researcher himself. He now encourages his students to explore the archives for the same reason he still does: to find what’s not online.
“I want them to conduct research offline,” he said. “A lot of the information in these collections isn’t published anywhere else. You have to physically go there, and it’s such an amazing resource to have.”
Preserving Mississippi
For Gregory, the stacks of acid-free boxes and folders are more than paper. It’s the state’s collective memory spanning generations of leadership, debate and progress.
“Through this collection, we can see what the people of Mississippi communicated to their elected officials,” Gregory said. “What they wanted to see or not see, and what motivations they had that we are still talking about today. People come in here just to look at what past Mississippians did and what they thought about the national policies affecting the state.”
For Pugh, these kinds of records are immeasurably valuable.
“We have an absolute jewel here,” he said. “If more people utilized the collection, we’d continue to grow it even more than we have.”
For Gregory, that continued growth is what ensures Mississippi’s political story is saved, told, researched and used to continue to tell history through Mississippi.
“In other countries, they burn this stuff and it’s lost forever,” she said. “It’s so important to have this, because when you don’t know your own state’s history, you don’t know your country.”
By Mary Pollitz, Photos by Grace Cockrell
