A $1.2 million estate gift from the late Bessie Louise Ford, who wrote the influential newsletter Inside Alabama Politics and the “Business & Politics” column for Business Alabama, will fund scholarships at the University of Mississippi, her alma mater.
Her gift establishes the Robert, Nona and Bessie Ford Scholarship Fund, which also honors her parents. Ford grew up in Charleston, Mississippi, and scholarships from the fund will help students from Tallahatchie County earn degrees at Ole Miss.
“It makes a lot of sense for Bessie to want to help other students,” said T.J. Potts, president of PMT Publishing Co. and Ford’s longtime publisher and friend. PMT publishes Business Alabama.
“Bessie came from very modest circumstances and went off to Ole Miss all on her own, wearing clothes sewn by her mother,” Potts recalled. “She was very committed to helping the people of Charleston and Tallahatchie County. She loved Mississippi and Ole Miss, so it’s no surprise that she would want her legacy to benefit students there.”
Ford, who died in August 2022, was a student at Ole Miss when UPI hired her to report on James Meredith’s enrollment in October 1962. She was soon hired to work in UPI’s Jackson, Mississippi, bureau and in 1969 became UPI’s first female bureau chief in Montgomery.
In 1985 she became editor and writer of Inside Alabama Politics, and she wrote her column in Business Alabama beginning with the magazine’s inaugural issue in January 1986. She retired from both publications in 2010.
“Bessie was the most well-connected journalist in Alabama for 20 to 30 years,” Potts said. “In terms of having sources that she could absolutely count on, she was way ahead of anybody else working in Alabama.
“She was tough as hell and she didn’t take prisoners,” Potts said of Ford. “By that, I mean she was right down the middle and didn’t take sides or have a particular lean in her reporting. She was tough, but she was always fair.”
Recipients of scholarships from the new fund will be selected based on financial need, and the fund will prioritize students from Tallahatchie County who plan to pursue full-time undergraduate studies.
