History Is Lunch: Pete Smith, “Women Journalists and Mississippi Politics 1880s-1980s”

On April 10, 2024, Pete Smith presented “Women Journalists and Mississippi Politics 1880s-1980s” as part of the History Is Lunch series.
Although women had covered state politics and been involved in Mississippi journalism, no one had ever produced a book focusing on their role. Mississippi State University associate professor Pete Smith had been researching Norma Fields, the trailblazing capitol correspondent for the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, when he decided to broaden his scope to include other women working in the field.
“What I found was that there were indeed others like Norma Fields: women who covered the state’s political landscape but whose work had been overlooked,” Smith said. “Further, their experiences reflect broader social, political, legal, and cultural changes in the South and the nation.”
Smith’s book Birddogs and Tough Old Broads: Women Journalists of Mississippi and a Century of State Politics, 1880s-1980s documents the experiences and observations of more than a dozen women who covered Mississippi politics. The period spans from right after the end of Reconstruction, when newspapers were the primary source of information, to the steady decline in news revenue and circulation and the emergence of corporate journalism in the 1980s.
Aimee Edmondson, associate dean of Ohio University’s Scripps College of Communication, wrote that the book “is a masterful and lively narrative with a vivid sense of place, a must-read for anyone interested in the cultural history of the South. Pete Smith’s deep knowledge of Mississippi journalism comes through in that fine literary tradition of southern storytelling.”
Pete Smith is associate professor of communication and media studies at Mississippi State University. He earned his BA in communication from Mississippi State University, his MA in communication from Auburn University, and his PhD in communication from the University of Southern Mississippi. Smith’s previous book is Something on My Own: Gertrude Berg and American Broadcasting, 1929-1956. He is a former president of the American Journalism Historians Association and is on the advisory board of the Mississippi Free Press. Smith was named MSU’s 2023 Mississippi Humanities Council Teacher of the Year and was a 2021 recipient of MSU’s inaugural Humanities Fellowship Award from the Institute for the Humanities.
History Is Lunch is a weekly lecture series of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History that explores all aspects of the state’s past. The hour-long programs are held in the Craig H. Neilsen Auditorium of the Museum of Mississippi History and Mississippi Civil Rights Museum building at 222 North Street in Jackson and livestreamed on CZcams and Facebook.