In a December ceremony at Mississippi State, the university officially accepted the congressional papers of Mike Espy.

Mike Espy, right, former 2nd District congressman and U.S. agriculture secretary, formally presents his congressional papers to President Malcolm Portera and Dean of Libraries Frances Coleman. The Espy Collection will be housed in the Congressional and Political Research Center at Mitchell Memorial Library.

The program included comments by Espy, former 2nd District congressman and the first African-American United States agriculture secretary, as well as MSU President Malcolm Portera and other campus officials.

Espy's papers will be housed in the library's new Congressional and Political Research Center. They join the previously donated collections of former Sen. John C. Stennis, former Reps. G.V. "Sonny" Montgomery, David Bowen and Charles Griffin, and current Rep. Chip Pickering.

The collection also includes papers of Wiley Carter, former administrative assistant to Sen. Thad Cochran, and Wayne Weidie, current chief of staff to Rep. Gene Taylor.

Espy, a Yazoo City native, represented Mississippi's 2nd District 1987-93, when President Bill Clinton named him secretary of agriculture. During his congressional tenure, he served as national vice chair of the Democratic Leadership Council and as vice chair of the Democratic Caucus.

As the 25th agriculture secretary, he is credited with reorganizing a $65 billion agency, negotiating multilateral trade treaties to give greater access to foreign markets for U.S. agricultural products, and establishing the groundwork for changes in the 1995 farm law.

Now residing in Madison, he is a member of Butler, Snow, O'Mara, Stevens, and Cannada, the state's largest law firm. He also serves as senior adviser for the Advisory Board for the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy and as director of Feed the Children.