Contact: Brad Moreland

STARKVILLE, Miss.—A new documentary on veteran Mississippi journalist Bill Minor will be featured Tuesday [Oct. 27] during a special public program at Mississippi State University.

Titled “Bill Minor: Eyes on Mississippi,” the hour-long film covers the career of the Louisiana native and Tulane University graduate whose professional life was spent almost entirely in Jackson, the Magnolia State’s capital.

Sponsored by the MSU Libraries, the screening begins at 2 p.m. in the third-floor John Grisham Room of Mitchell Memorial Library. Minor and Ellen Ann Fentress, the film’s editor and producer, will be in attendance.

Fentress, along with film editor and co-writer Lida Gibson, spent five years producing the documentary. Their efforts were supported by the Mississippi Humanities Council, Community Foundation of Greater Jackson and several private donors.

Sharing their views on screen are former Justice Department attorney John Doar; New York Times civil rights journalist Claude Sitton; Myrlie Evers, widow of slain civil rights leader Medger Evers; Jackson physician Robert Smith; former Gov. William Winter; New Orleans Times-Picayune editor Jim Amoss; and Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Hank Klibanoff. Also featured are photographs and video news footage from 15 U.S. archives.

Minor’s work in his adopted state began in 1947 as a correspondent for the Times-Picayune. Over the years, he also was a frequent contributor to the Times, Newsweek magazine and other national publications, particularly involving such controversial issues as racial inequality in an era when most state-based and other Southern journalists would not touch them.

When the Louisiana daily closed its Mississippi bureau in 1976, Minor purchased an existing weekly newspaper, The Capitol Reporter, and continued his investigative reporting career.

Stories Minor covered as a crusading editor sometimes cost him advertising dollars and brought threats to his personal safety. After a six-year run, the paper’s unprofitability force him to cease publication.

Undaunted, Minor continued producing his “Eyes On Mississippi” column. Today, at age 93, he still writes about state politics and other topics of interest in a syndicated column appearing regularly in a number of state newspapers.

Fred Smith, MSU Libraries’ rare-book coordinator, noted that Minor has covered Mississippi politics continuously since the late 1940s death of Theodore G. Bilbo, a controversial, two-time segregationist governor who subsequently won election to the United States Senate and died in office.

While his coverage of politics and the civil rights era often was viewed as controversial, Minor always has been a fair and accurate reporter, Smith said.

Several decades ago, Minor donated his official papers and other materials to MSU.

“Bill Minor’s exceptional collection of papers and artifacts are an important part of the extensive and nationally significant journalism collection housed in Special Collections in Mitchell Memorial Library,” Smith said.

For more information on the special campus library event, contact Lynda Graham at 662-325-6634 or lgraham@library.msstate.edu.

For more on the Mississippi State University Libraries, visit http://library.msstate.edu/.

MSU is Mississippi’s leading university, available online at www.msstate.edu.