John W. Winkle III, a longtime University of Mississippi professor and state constitution expert, dies at 75

John W. Winkle III, a longtime University of Mississippi political science professor who wrote a definitive reference book about the Mississippi Constitution, has died. He was 75.

According to an obituary from his family, he died Sunday at a hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, days after having a brain hemorrhage.

Winkle was a native of Rome, Georgia. After earning a doctoral degree from Duke University, he began working at Ole Miss 1974. He served multiple times as chairman of the Political Science Department on the campus in Oxford. Among the courses he taught were those on constitutional law and civil rights and civil liberties.

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Winkle received several teaching awards, and his colleagues recognized him with the Liberal Arts Excellence Award four times, the University Research Award four times and the Graduate School Research Award four times. In 1998, he received an award that goes to one faculty member in Mississippi’s university system for contributions to higher education.

After Winkle retired in 2013, he continued to teach courses in the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College at Ole Miss. An anonymous donor recently honored Winkle by naming a research and reading room for him on campus.

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Winkle also taught at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Emory University and King’s College in London as an invited visiting professor.

Survivors include his wife, Ellen Meacham of Taylor, Mississippi; sons Johnny Winkle of Atlanta, Jason Winkle of Memphis, Tennessee, and Will Winkle of Taylor; brother, Joseph R. Winkle of Carmel, Indiana; and six grandchildren.

Funeral services are 2 p.m. Thursday at Oxford-University United Methodist Church.