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Biography/History:
Icey Wiley Day, a Mississippi Democratic representative who sponsored right-to-work legislation and vocational programs for the blind, was born in Ethel, Attala County, Mississippi, on July 1, 1891. His parents were John Vandiver and Anne Elizabeth Wilson Day. As a boy, Day’s eyesight was poor. When he was ten years old, he lost his vision entirely while playing baseball. Thereafter, Day attended the Mississippi Institute for the Blind in Jackson, graduating in 1910. He continued his education at the University of Mississippi at Oxford, studying law. He completed his law degree with honors in 1913. Day began practicing law that same year in Kosciusko, Mississippi. He was elected to the Mississippi House of Representatives for a four-year term in 1915. He later moved to Texas, where he abstracted timberland titles for four years. Returning to Kosciusko, Day resumed his law practice and began farming in Ethel. He was reelected to the House in 1932, retaining his seat for the rest of his life except for the 1940-1944 term. Day was reelected to the 1956-1960 term, but he died before he could take his seat.
Day’s assignments in the House included speaker pro tempore; chairman of committees on county affairs, pensions and social welfare, and conservation of minerals and natural resources; and membership on committees on rules, ways and means, contingent expenses, and the judiciary. He was also a member of the advisory committee on legal education that dealt with integration issues in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Day assisted with such projects as funding for school construction in Attala County, the first paved-road program in the state and the state-aid program for farm-to-market roads, the farmers’ market, farm exemptions, and funding for municipalities. He helped to pass the homestead exemption, old-age assistance, and balancing agriculture with industry laws. Day co-sponsored the right-to-work law, ensuring that both union and non-union workers could be employed in the state and that unions could not coerce workers into joining any labor union in order to secure or retain employment.
Besides these projects, Day was noted for his work on behalf of blind Mississippians. He sponsored legislation to build a new state school for the blind and a new state vocational rehabilitation school for the blind in Jackson. When the legislature was not in session, Day worked as a counselor in the Vocational Rehabilitation Office, Division for the Blind, Mississippi Department of Public Welfare. This division created Mississippi Industries for the Blind during the administration of Governor Paul B. Johnson, Sr. (1940-1943), employing five to ten people at that time. With Day’s leadership, it became a profitable business employing mostly blind people in the manufacture of brooms, mops, and mattresses, among other products. Day believed that able-bodied people should work to earn their own living and that welfare assistance should be reserved for the elderly and the needy. By 1955, about 150 people were working at Mississippi Industries for the Blind, one-third of whom were black Mississippians. By 1965, about 330 people were working there with a total payroll of half a million dollars and a business volume of over one million dollars. Mississippi Industries for the Blind was so successful that states like Illinois and New York modeled their own vocational programs after it.
Day met his first wife, Hugh Annie Taylor, while he was a student at the Mississippi Institute for the Blind in Jackson. Taylor was the youngest daughter of B. B. Taylor. She had been a teacher in Montgomery County for many years before teaching at the state school for the blind. Day was in law school when they were married at Duck Hill, Montgomery County, Mississippi, on September 13, 1911. When Day was a state representative, Annie Taylor Day worked as a bookkeeper for her brother, Dr. J. P. Taylor, who was state treasurer. She died after an illness of several months on July 25, 1918. Day married Gladys Allen in 1927. They had two children, Icey W., Jr., and Patsy. Day was a member of the First Baptist Church of Kosciusko, Mississippi. His civic and fraternal memberships included the Lions Club, Rotary Club, Knights of Pythias, Masonic Order, Odd Fellows, and Woodmen of the World. As a Lions Club member, Day would give talks on what he and fellow club members were doing for the blind in the state. One of these presentations was at the 1952 International Lions Club Convention in Mexico City. Day was featured on the CBS television program, On Your Account, with a format similar to This Is Your Life, but the prize money awarded to the participants was usually donated to a favorite charity.
On December 14, 1955, Day suffered a heart attack while in Jackson to attend a meeting of the advisory committee on legal education. One week later, Day died at the age of sixty-four at the Mississippi Baptist Hospital. He was buried in the City Cemetery at Kosciusko. In his honor, Mississippi Industries for the Blind was designated as the Icey W. Day Memorial--Mississippi Industries for the Blind.
Scope and Content:
This collection contains incoming correspondence, legislative papers, speeches, newsclippings, government documents, arguments presented before the United States Supreme Court, and one broadside. The correspondence blends the personal and the professional. Topics include the silver wedding anniversary of Icey W. and Gladys Allen Day, inquiries regarding Day’s health after illnesses or accidents, notes of encouragement or requests for assistance from fellow legislators, and personal appeals from constituents and lobbyists. Writers include such state-level figures as Hugh White, Walter Sillers, Heber Ladner, Fielding L. Wright, J. P. Coleman, and John C. Stennis. The legislative papers contain testimonies for the right-to-work law from Mississippians and non-Mississippians. The newsclippings provide more details of Day’s legislative career, along with personal sketches. The government documents pertain to Day’s legislative business: a handbook of the 1952 regular session, a retirement plan, a study of conservation in the state, and an issue of the Welfare Brief in posthumous tribute to Day. The United States Supreme Court arguments are from school-desegregation cases that relate to Day’s work on the advisory committee on legal education of the Mississippi House of Representatives.
Series Identification:
This series contains incoming personal, legislative, and miscellaneous correspondence. It includes letters of encouragement after a fall in which Day broke his arm and letters of congratulation on his reelection.
This series, all photocopies, includes statements in behalf of the right-to-work law, accompanying papers, and drafts of other bills. The statements are by three Mississippians from various occupations, all favoring House Bill No. 336 (right-to-work bill). The accompanying papers consist of two speeches in favor of right-to-work legislation, one of them given by Cecil B. DeMille in South Dakota on May 6, 1953. Another item is entitled "CIO Legislative Program for 1954 / Resolution No. 31." This series also contains drafts of legislative bills on the right to work, old-age assistance, county expenditures, mining, and taxation of automobile insurance companies. Day is one co-author listed on House Bill No. 227. The other bills are anonymous, although it is probable that Day authored or co-authored them.
This series includes a typewritten copy of a speech by Icey W. Day in support of Mrs. Thomas L. Bailey’s candidacy for state tax collector and a photocopy of an anonymous speech to the Mississippi legislature regarding states’ rights delivered during the term of Governor Fielding L. Wright.
This series consists of a broadside entitled "To the People of Attala County" from Icey W. Day, defending his legislative record during a campaign for reelection.
This series contains various publications of the State of Mississippi. There is a Handbook, Mississippi Legislature, 1952-1956 (1952 regular session); a pamphlet entitled Retirement Plan for Employees of the State of Mississippi (1951); a pamphlet entitled The State and Its Idle Land: Part II, The Great Problem Now Before Our State Managers, by J. N. Flowers, Jackson, Mississippi (December 1949); and one issue of a journal published by the Mississippi Department of Public Welfare, the Welfare Brief, Vol. 2, Nos. 9 and 10 (January and February, 1956), a posthumous tribute to Icey W. Day.
This series contains arguments presented before the United States Supreme Court. One item is a bound copy of arguments presented on both sides of Harry Briggs, Jr., et al. v. R. W. Elliott, Chairman, J. D. Carson, et al., Members of Board of Trustees of School District No. 22, Clarendon County, S.C., et al., December 9-10, 1952. This case involved "separate but equal" education in South Carolina. The lawyers presenting the arguments were Thurgood Marshall and John W. Davis. The other item is a photocopy of an "Argument of Honorable John W. Davis in the Supreme Court of the United States on School Segregation Cases, December 7, 1953," that references Briggs v. Elliott. Attached to this item is a photocopy of an undated cover letter by J. P. Coleman.
This series contains photocopies of newspaper articles documenting some of Icey W. Day’s legislative and civic projects, his appearance on national television, and several obituaries of Day.