JACKSON - Jean Muirhead quietly placed a proposed amendment on the Senate reading clerk's desk during a routine Senate debate on a bill making some small change in the state law on court jury selection. It was 1968.
Her fellow lawmakers were unaware she was about to take women's rights in Mississippi out of the dark ages.
Her amendment was simple: It removed only ONE word in the long-standing statute setting out the qualifications of persons who could serve on state court juries.
But it was a key word. The word was "male."
Before most of the men in the Senate comprehended the meaning of striking the word "male" from juror qualifications, Muirhead's amendment had been adopted.
A blustering Sen. George Yarbrough of Red Banks, then the Senate president pro tem, after the entire bill had passed, held it up another day on a reconsideration motion.
But word had gone forth that the "simple" amendment put in the bill by Muirhead would end a century of discrimination against Mississippi women serving on juries. By then it couldn't be stopped. It went on the law books.
A postscript: When Jean Muirhead, whose Senate district covered most of Southwest Jackson, came up for re-election, despite the courageous blow she had struck for women's rights, she was defeated by a practically illiterate man.
Muirhead's experience is poignantly symbolic of the struggle by women in this state to win and hold elective public office.
The statistics on the number of women put into office, especially higher office, in this state tell an atrocious story, confirming the view - long held by this writer - that there is a built-in bias in the electorate against putting women in governmental positions.
A study by the respected Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University shows Mississippi is fourth from the bottom of all states in the number of women serving in the state Legislature.
We, says the Eagleton report, are one of only five states which has never elected a woman to the U.S. House or the U.S. Senate. That latter statistic is especially shameful, considering that both our neighboring states - Louisiana and Arkansas - now have a woman in the Senate.
More women are needed in government in Mississippi "to provide a balance" in decision-making and solving problems, Evelyn Gandy, the "first lady of Mississippi politics," strongly insists.
Gandy, now 81, came nearest to being elected Mississippi's only woman governor, in 1979, and again in 1983, both times leading the ticket in the Democratic first primary and being defeated in the runoff.
Gandy, then the state's lieutenant governor, made her closest bid in 1979 when she was defeated by William Winter in the Democratic runoff. Winter went on to win the general election,over Republican Jack Reed, still in a time when Mississippi was a one-party Democratic state.
While Winter has since become revered for enacting the landmark 1982 Education Reform Act and as Mississippi's elder statesman, many observers believed back in 1979 that voters, who twice before had rejected his bid for governor, narrowly chose him over Gandy because she was a woman.
Since 1983, Gandy hasn't sought any public office, contenting herself as a mentor, cheerleader and role model for other women in politics.
Her prize pupil had been Lt. Gov. Amy Tuck, who won her job as a Democrat in 1999 with a hefty boost from Gandy.
Last November, when Tuck switched parties with considerable fanfare and an unprecedented gathering of Republican bigwigs in the second-floor rotunda of the state Capitol, Gandy, whom Tuck had once acclaimed as her role model, was noticeably not on hand. Gandy has shied away from commenting on Tuck's party switch.
Tuck, incidentally, is one of five women elected lieutenant governor in the South in the past four years - a new high for the region - and she is the only one who is a Republican.
"We have made some progress in the number of women elected to public office in this state," said Gandy "but we have fallen behind other states."
Gandy cited a dramatic example of how women can make a major difference in shaping public policy. In 1950, when Gandy was a member of the Mississippi House, "my colleague, the late Rep. Zelma Price of Greenville, played a crucial role in establishing the University of Mississippi Medical School and teaching hospital in Jackson."
One vote would decide if the bill would pass, "and we were counting on Zelma when she was hospitalized for injuries in an automobile accident," Gandy remembered.
So determined was Price to cast her vote for the Medical School, she was rushed down to the Capitol in an ambulance, and wheeled onto the floor of the House on a hospital gurney.
"Zelma's vote passed the bill and today we have one of the outstanding medical schools in the country," Gandy said.
Raising adequate money to finance their campaigns, Gandy said, "is the biggest problem women face in running for office in Mississippi."
Dr. Cora Norman, the longtime director of the Mississippi Humanities Council, who made an unsuccessful bid for state auditor in the 1991 Democratic primary, agrees. Norman gave specifics of the disparity between men and women in campaign financing.
"I would go to a fund-raising event and people would write $20 checks," Norman declared, adding, "but you knew these same people would write $500 checks for men candidates."
