Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, State Government Funded Racist Department: Sovereignty Commission Online

Thursday, June 16, 2005

Sovereignty Commission Online

Sovereignty Commission Online

After the murder of Emmett Till, a black McComb minister wrote to Lt. Governor Carroll Gartin in August of 1957 to suggest that something must be done regarding the violence against negroes. Rev. Hollis N. Turner's nine page letter (following Gartin's aloof letter to Ney Gore of the Sovereignty Commission) tragically goes through a number of rapes and murders that have been perpetrated against people in or near Magnolia and McComb.

Betty Butler was “killed a few steps north of the overhead bridge” in McComb, “by a sixteen-year-old white boy

The Kidnap/murder of a 16-year-old white girl residing in Walthall County by four white men is reported next. The minister writes the girl was taken from her bedroom, carried into a swamp and raped. One man confessed, but was acquitted by an all-white jury in a trial in Magnolia, he states. No date is given.

Near the same spot, a 12-year-old girl is raped...

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Mississippi Sovereignty Commission Links

On Wikipedia: ” The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission was a state agency directed by the governor of Mississippi that existed from 1956 to 1977. The commission's stated objective was to "[...] protect the sovereignty of the state of Mississippi, and her sister states" from "federal encroachment." Initially, it was formed to coordinate activities to portray the state, and the legal racial segregation enforced by the state, in a more positive light.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_State_Sovereignty_Commission Facts About Mississippi Sovereignty Commission: Some facts about the now-defunct Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, whose files were opened to the public Tuesday. FOUNDED: Created by legislative act in 1956, two years after the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education outlawed segregated schools. MISSION: The Legislature created the commission to "protect the sovereignty of the State of Mississippi and her sister states" from federal government interference. In practice, it worked to preserve a segregated society and to oppose school integration. In secret, the commission harassed and spied on activists, branding many of them racial agitators and communist infiltrators. http://www.mdcbowen.org/p2/bh/badco/missSov.htm MDAH Digital Collection: Sovereignty Commission Online http://mdah.state.ms.us/arrec/digital_archives/sovcom/ The Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission by Jo Freeman (2001): “On Thursday, August 18, 1966 I entered the Bellflower Church in Grenada, Mississippi, which the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) was using as its headquarters for a voter registration project. I had been a fieldworker for SCLC for over a year but in Mississippi only since June.” http://www.uic.edu/orgs/cwluherstory/jofreeman/sixtiesprotest/FSMMiss.htm