Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, State Government Funded Racist Department: Reports detail another incident

Monday, July 04, 2005

Reports detail another incident

Reports detail another incident:
(Not a Sovereignty Commission story, but interesting anyway ...)

"Reports detail another incident
By DON MCCRAINE
The Natchez Democrat

CENTREVILLE -- Allegations of the mass slaughter of black soldiers by military police at Camp Van Dorn in 1943 have never been proven. And the Army claims to have conducted an extensive study in 1999 refuting those allegations.

But military police were involved in at least one wrongful act at Camp Van Dorn, the Centreville Jeffersonian reported in its July 14, 1944 editions.
According to the report, Major Louis R. Lefkoff, 34, of Atlanta, was court-martialed and found guilty of ordering the flogging of several soldiers confined at the Camp Van Dorn stockade.

Testimony at Lefkoff's trial showed six white prisoners and three black prisoners were beaten at Lefkoff's command after being labeled 'trouble-makers.'
Military police carried out the corporal punishment -- forbidden by the military -- after a stockade guard refused to comply with Lefkoff's order, the report stated."

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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