McCOMB - Forty-five years ago this past Monday, I began my career in Mississippi journalism, reporting for work as a reporter on the Jackson State-Times, a daily newspaper that folded five years later.
Except for a few months' exile in Florida, where I was police reporter for the Jacksonville Journal, another afternoon paper that no longer exists, I have spent most of those 45 years in Mississippi - almost 39 of them in McComb.
That's a long time, although it doesn't seem like it to me.
Had I reflected on the 45 years previous to my first reporting job in 1957, I would have noted the advent of mass-produced automobiles, air travel, television and countless modern conveniences which were little more than some inventor's dream at the turn of the previous century.
I didn't reflect on anything but the task at hand that first day, though, and this is not going to be a treatise on the technological advances of the past 45 years.
Rather it is an observation on two Mississippi issues that seem to give credence to the adage that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
One is race; the other the relationship between Mississippi's governor and the Legislature.
Covering the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the changes that era initiated constitutes the most memorable part of my journalism career.
Books have been written on the changes that have occurred in Mississippi and the rest of the South since legal segregation was outlawed in the mid-1960s.
Today's environment, where black people freely vote, hold public office and have access to the same public accommodations as whites, is as alien to 1957 Mississippi as was a new 1957 Chevy to the horse-drawn wagons people were still using in 1912.
But what hasn't changed is the fact that race is still an issue in much of the news today. Consider redistricting, the Ayers case and lesser publicized events all over the state where race is part of the story.
Although the specifics have changed, the race issue is still to be put to rest. I wonder if it will be in 45 more years.
On the other subject, when I started work in 1957, then-Gov. J.P. Coleman was at odds with leaders of the Legislature over, among other things, rewriting the state Constitution. The Legislature, which resisted change, prevailed.
Now, Gov. Ronnie Musgrove often is at odds with the Legislature over various issues, most notably financial, and usually the Legislature prevails.
In between Coleman and Musgrove were other governors, some of whom fared better with the Legislature than others. One, Bill Allain, like Coleman, tried without success to rewrite the state Constitution.
Although struggles between the executive and the legislative branches have most often been the norm, there have been times when governors and lawmakers agreed on major issues and did great things: The education reform act that provided public kindergartens during the William Winter administration is an example, although it required an intense lobbying campaign by the governor's staff.
Musgrove's Advantage Mississippi and the Nissan project may turn out to be another positive example of cooperation between the executive and legislative branches, despite the disagreements they're having on other issues.
During Gov. Ross Barnett's administration from 1960 until 1964, he got most every thing he wanted from the Legislature in his failed effort to fight integration, something that can now be used as a pretty good argument that cooperation between the two branches of government isn't always a good thing.
Maybe there's something to be said for shared power and disagreements as cumbersome as they often are.
