Contact: Allison Matthews
Photo by: Megan Bean
STARKVILLE, Miss.--Curtis Wilkie shared stories of his exemplary journalism career and of Mississippi politics during the debut of Mississippi State's Lamar Conerly Governance Forum Monday [Nov. 17].
The prominent journalist whose newspaper career began in the Mississippi Delta and took him to Washington, D.C., Delaware, Massachusetts and the Middle East, said he returned to his home state after his retirement from the Boston Globe in 2000 because it was a much better place than it was during his youth.
"Mississippi: A Writer's Dream" was the topic of Wilkie's lecture, which was hosted by the university's political science and public administration department. To focus on contemporary issues in governance, legal affairs and public policy, the Conerly Governance Forum Lecture Series is made possible with the support of its namesake and his wife Tracy.
As the inaugural Conerly Governance Forum guest, Wilkie reflected on the state's "interesting, â¦sometimes strange history and our politics that always seems to be getting us into the national news."
With his career starting during the 1960s civil rights movement, Wilkie said he has seen a variety of memorable politicians and has many a story he could share about the colorful people he has covered.
"We are a state full of great stories and amazing ambiguities. In my lifetime, this state has been transformed by dramatic change," he said. "In other ways we seem grounded in an inertia that some like to call tradition or our heritage. But, make no mistake, I think Mississippi is an infinitely better place today that it was when I was a young man."
In addition to his journalism writing, Wilkie also is author of "The Fall of the House of Zeus: The Rise and Fall of America's Most Powerful Trial Lawyer," "Dixie: A Personal Odyssey Through Events That Shaped the Modern South," and, most recently, "Assassins, Eccentrics, Politicians, and Other Persons of Interest: Fifty Pieces from the Road." He is co-author of "Arkansas Mischief: Birth of a National Scandal" and a contributor to "City Adrift: New Orleans Before and After Katrina."
The 1963 University of Mississippi journalism graduate is a Greenville native who now is a UM faculty member and the Overby Fellow in Journalism.
Wilkie said many people wonder why Mississippi has produced so many writers.
"Conflict is an essential ingredient in exciting stories, and we've always had more conflict in this state than you can shake a stick at," he said, noting racial conflict, economic conflict and class conflict.
Wilkie discussed the self-defeating system of segregation that he experienced in boyhood, but said the state has made strides that would have at one time been unimaginable.
"We've still got work to do," he said.
He also discussed other elements of Mississippi culture.
"We do live in a state where old connections run deep. Family connections, school connections, political connections." Wilkie said he discovered again how intimate the state's people are connected when he set out to write "Fall of the House of Zeus" about the Dickie Scruggs trial.
"I found that so many of the trails that I was following led back to a loose network of influential people in the state, and as a result, 'Zeus' became more of a book about Mississippi politics than it was a book about white collar crime," Wilkie said.
During Q-and-A time following his remarks, Wilkie was asked about current state and national politics and world politics relating to the Middle East, where he lived during the 1980s when he established the Boston Globe's Middle East bureau.
"If I've learned anything from my years covering American politics it's this: that people basically are not receptive to radical change or extremist politics from the right or the left," he said.
Learn more about MSU's political science and public administration department at www.pspa.msstate.edu.
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