Jack Reed (Mississippi politician)
Jack Raymond Reed, Sr., was an American businessman and politician from his native Tupelo, Mississippi.
Reed graduated from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. During World War II, he served in the Signal Intelligence Service of the United States Army during the Occupation of Japan. In 1947, he received his master's degree in retailing from New York University in New York City. Reed returned home to help with his family's Reed's Department Store. He was president of the Mississippi Economic Council in 1962. In 1984, Democratic Governor William Winter appointed Reed to the Mississippi Board of Education. He was the chairman of the first state board consisting of lay members. He left the position in 1987 to run for governor. He was subsequently chosen by U.S. President George H.W. Bush to head the National Advisory Committee on Education Research and Improvement.
He was the 1987 Republican gubernatorial nominee. He defeated Douglas Hammond "Doug" Lemon of Florence in his party's primary election but then lost the general election to Democrat Ray Mabus.
Nevertheless, Reed's 47 percent of the vote was encouraging to his party. He fared better than his Republican predecessors Rubel Phillips in 1963 and 1967, Gil Carmichael in 1975 and 1979, and Leon Bramlett in 1983. In 1991, the Mississippi GOP won the governorship for the first time since Reconstruction with the election of businessman Kirk Fordice, who unseated Mabus.
Reed is the subject of several books. In 2015, Reed was awarded an honorary Doctor of Public Service degree from Millsaps College in Jackson. Millsaps declared Reed one of the "few individuals to have positively impacted the state of Mississippi," citing his support for business expansion and public education in the aftermath of desegregation. He died two years later at the age of ninety-one. His son, Jack Reed, Jr., is a past mayor of their hometown of Tupelo.
