When something’s working, it’s usually best to resist the urge to tinker with it. To its credit, that’s what the Mississippi House did this week when it overwhelmingly rejected a Senate bill to restructure the board that governs the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.
For 119 years, the Archives and History board of trustees has been something of an outlier among state agencies. Its members nominate their own successors, who then are confirmed by the state Senate.
Dissatisfied with that, senators approved a bill a few weeks ago to give the governor and lieutenant governor final nomination authority for the board, with the Senate still confirming. Archives and History board members could still recommend nominees, but the two elected officials could ignore them if they wished.
Senate leaders said members of the Archives and History board would be more accountable to the public if they were chosen by elected officials. But a number of historians said the change risked an injection of politics into Mississippi’s ongoing examination of its history.
Nearly 50 history instructors at Mississippi colleges and universities signed a letter last month in praise of the Department of Archives and History, and said the state’s method of choosing its directors should be left alone.
The department has many duties and keeps plenty of records and artifacts from around the state. But in recent years its most prominent role has been the operation of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum and the Museum of Mississippi History, the side-by-side institutions that opened in 2017.
By all standards, the department has done an excellent job telling our state’s story — warts and all. The Civil Rights Museum is open and honest about two centuries of legally sanctioned injustice, while the history museum provides a wealth of information about this fascinating place that we all choose to call home.
Both museums successfully remind us about our history in order to help us avoid repeating mistakes. And the department as a whole stepped up once again last year when the Legislature suddenly and unexpectedly voted to change the divisive state flag.
A special flag committee invited nominations for a replacement from the public and received hundreds of designs. The Department of Archives and History displayed them all online and even let people vote on which ones they liked. The public got to follow along as the special committee worked its way to its choice of the magnolia flag, which got approved by voters last November. The margin of support — with nearly three out of four voters signing off on the new flag — was a testament to the capable way the change was handled.
The House apparently recognized the merit of jobs well done — the museums and the flag. In a vote of confidence for the Archives and History board, the House rejected the Senate proposal by a surprising 103-19 margin.
Rep. John Hines, D-Greenville, opposing the legislation, asked, “If you make the best biscuits in town, why change the recipe?” Put another way, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Right now the Archives and History board is not broken.
