Evelyn Gandy

Edythe Evelyn Gandy (September 4, 1920 – December 23, 2007) was an American attorney and politician who served as Lieutenant Governor of Mississippi from 1976 to 1980.

A Democrat who held several public offices throughout her career, she was the first woman elected to a statewide constitutional office in Mississippi.

Born in Hattiesburg, she attended the University of Mississippi School of Law as the only woman in her class.

Following graduation, she took a job as a research assistant for United States Senator Theodore Bilbo.

Edythe Evelyn Gandy was born on September 4, 1920, to Kearney C. Gandy and Abbie Whigham Gandy in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, United States.

Her parents encouraged her from a young age to pursue what interests she had without regard for her gender.

She later credited her father, who had supported the women's suffrage movement, with being particularly supportive of her ambitions.

She attended Hattiesburg High School, and in her senior year served as president of the debate club and edited the school yearbook and newspaper.

Graduating from high school in 1938, she attended Mississippi Southern College before studying law at the University of Mississippi School of Law in Oxford.

A Democrat, Gandy worked in the speaker's bureau of Paul B. Johnson Sr.'s 1939 gubernatorial campaign.

The only woman in her 1943 law school class, she won a state women's oratorical contest in 1941 and was the first woman to be elected president of the law school student body.

She was also the first woman to edit the Mississippi Law Journal.

Following graduation from law school, Gandy sought to join the United States armed forces during World War II, but was disqualified due to nearsightedness.

She then took a job as a research assistant in the office of Mississippi United States Senator Theodore Bilbo in Washington, D.C., as Bilbo was a family friend.

During her employment Bilbo published a book detailing his views on racial segregation, entitled Take Your Choice: Separation or Mongrelization.

Gandy was widely suspected to be the ghost writer of the work, and she later admitted to conducting most of the research for the book.

In 1947, she opened a law practice.

The following year she was elected treasurer of the Mississippi State Bar Association.

She campaigned in 1947 to be elected to the Mississippi House of Representatives for the seat from Forrest County.

She advocated for increased support for education, welfare, and the elderly.

Billing herself as a racial segregationist, she supported the "Preservation of the customs and traditions of the South and enactment of the necessary legislation to preserve the white Democratic primary."

One of her opponents, Lawrence D. Arrington, published an ad which asked "Do you believe that the legislative affairs of Forrest County can best be handled by a man or a woman?"

The ad continued by suggesting that some elements of political activity would be inappropriate for a "young girl".

She briefly practiced law before being elected to the Mississippi House of Representatives, where she served from 1948 to 1952.

She defeated Arrington in a primary runoff and was sworn-in in early 1948, working in the legislature for one four-year term.

She closed her law practice to focus on her legislative duties but in September became a legal researcher for the State Department of Public Welfare.

In the House, Gandy was assigned to the ways and means, judiciary, eleemosynary institutions, colleges and universities, and claims committees.

She introduced a successful bill to raise bond money for Hattiesburg city school construction and proposed another bill that would authorize Mississippi Southern College to establish its own nursing and law schools.

She proposed other bills to establish a state department of labor and a state cosmetology board.

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 before becoming first vice president the following year.

She was appointed to a two-year term on the Mississippi Congress of Parents and Teachers board of managers.

After losing a bid for re-election to her House seat in the 1951 Democratic primary to Donald Colmer, Gandy became director of the Division of Legal Services in the Department of Public Welfare, where she served until she announced her resignation in February 1959, effective March 31.

Defeated for re-election, she worked as director of the Division of Legal Services in the State Department of Public Welfare and Assistant Attorney General of Mississippi until she was elected State Treasurer of Mississippi in 1959.

In 1959 Gandy campaigned for election to the office of State Treasurer.

Following an unsuccessful campaign for the office of lieutenant governor in 1963, Gandy was appointed State Welfare Board commissioner.

She was re-elected state treasurer and served again in that role from 1968 to 1972.

She subsequently became insurance commissioner, and in that capacity she investigated false advertising, lobbied for the passage of a no-fault insurance law, pushed for stronger licensing requirements for insurance agents, and restructured the Mississippi Insurance Department.

In 1975 she ran a successful campaign to be elected lieutenant governor, thus becoming the first woman to serve in that role in Mississippi and in the Southern United States.

Following unsuccessful gubernatorial campaigns in 1979 and 1983, Gandy returned to the practice of law.

She remained publicly active in women's organizations and state Democratic politics until her death in 2007.