The University of Southern Mississippi has announced that its Evelyn Gandy Collection is now available for researchers. Gandy was a pioneering woman in Mississippi politics. In 1948, she was elected to the Mississippi Legislature. Later, she was the first woman to be elected state treasurer, commissioner of insurance, and lieutenant governor.
The archives included 127 boxes of materials including scrapbooks, correspondence, manuscripts, and campaign materials. Also included in the collection are nearly 2,000 photographs and personal memorabilia.
Casey Maugh Funderburk, associate provost of the Gulf Coast campus of the University of Southern Mississippi, stated that “Gandy is an under-studied public figure, so an archive of this kind will provide researchers valuable speeches, photographs and correspondence. There is no doubt that the Gandy collection will attract researchers to the University to study her archive. The state of Mississippi will benefit as work is published from the findings within the archive, bringing attention and notoriety to Evelyn Gandy as a skilled politician and beloved figure within Mississippi.”
Dr. Maugh Funderburk is a graduate of Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabama, where she majored in communication studies. She holds a master’s degree in speech communication from Colorado State University and a Ph.D. in communication arts and sciences from Pennsylvania State University.