JACKSON, Miss.—Family members of former Mississippi House Speaker Philip Gunn pulled a blue sheet off of his official portrait, gazing in adoration as dozens of lawmakers, Mississippi Capitol workers, lobbyists, friends and family clapped during the unveiling ceremony at the Mississippi Capitol Building rotunda on Wednesday.
The former Republican leader expressed that words were “inadequate” for the “gratitude” he felt that day in Jackson.
“Brighter days are ahead for Mississippi, but a bright future is not guaranteed to happen,” Gunn said at his portrait unveiling ceremony. “It takes leadership for us to get there. It took leadership for us to get here, and it’s going to take leadership for us to get there. I want to be a part of building those strong shoulders for the future generations to stand on.”
The Republican lawmaker represented House District 56 from 2004 to 2023 and was one of the longest-serving speakers in state history, leading the body from 2012 to 2023.
“Someone asked me what I wanted people to see when they looked at this portrait. I want you to see just a regular guy,” Gunn said. “I’m just a regular Mississippian. I’m just fortunate that God put me in a position to serve him.”
Cleveland, Mississippi, native Jason Bouldin painted Gunn’s official portrait, which will hang in the House’s antechamber outside of the House chamber. The artist also painted portraits of civil-rights activists Medgar and Myrlie Evers. He painted former House Speaker Billy McCoy’s portrait and the artist’s father, Marshall Bouldin III, completed portraits of former governors Dennis Murphree, John Bell Williams, Charles Clifton Finch and William Winter, as well as former House speakers Walter Sillers, John R. Junkin, Buddie Newman and Tim Ford.
Jason Bouldin said the energy and disposition of a person are the most important qualities that he tries to portray in his art. In Gunn’s portrait, the House speaker is sitting in a brown leather House page chair, leaning forward with his hands intertwined. The new Mississippi state flag is featured in the upper left corner of the portrait along with Gunn’s name and years of service.
“The goal for any portrait is not simply to look like somebody, that is to get their physical likeness—the color of their hair, their eyes, how tall they are—that’s a relatively easy thing to do,” Jason Bouldin said at the unveiling ceremony on Wednesday. “It’s more important to get the feeling of the person, to capture something of their tangible, physical presence, yes, but also to capture something of their more intangible character, presence and being.”
Gunn oversaw the Legislature’s decision to change the Mississippi state flag, which once featured a Confederate emblem, in favor of a new one that features a magnolia, the official state flower. Black Mississippians had sought for decades to change the state flag, citing its racist origins.
The former speaker first called to change the state flag in 2015, after a neo-Confederate gunman assassinated nine people in a Black church in Charleston, South Carolina. Five years later, as young Black Mississippians marched for a new state flag amid the 2020 race reckoning and other Black leaders worked behind the scenes for change, lawmakers in both chambers overwhelmingly voted to retire the old flag.
While Gunn was House speaker, the Legislature also passed a 15-week abortion ban in 2018 that sparked the court battle leading to the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, which led the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022, ending federal protections for abortion rights. Gunn oversaw the passage of a separate six-week abortion ban that helped guarantee virtually all abortions became illegal in Mississippi once Roe fell.
The Legislature later enacted dollar-for-dollar tax credits to people who donate to qualified nonprofit pregnancy resource centers in 2022, and in 2023 started the safe haven baby box program for families to legally and anonymously surrender infants who are younger than 72 hours old.
The state income tax saw a major decrease under Gunn’s leadership, which he said paved the way for the 2025 bill that gradually reduces the income tax to zero over time.
Lawmakers enacted legislation that helped Mississippi climb from 50th to 16th in the nation for education during Gunn’s tenure, including enacting the highest teacher pay raise in the state’s history, Gunn noted.
“Together, we made history, and we can do it again,” Gunn said.
He thanked God, his family and friends, and the people he worked with over the years, including Gov. Tate Reeves, who served as lieutenant governor and president of the Senate during most of Gunn’s tenure as House speaker.