Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, State Government Funded Racist Department

The Mississippi Sovereignty Commission was a secret state police force operating from 1956 to 1977 to suppress the civil rights movement and maintain segregation. The commission kept files, harassed and branded many as communist infiltrators via agents who were retired FBI, CIA and military intelligence. No one was safe in Mississsippi. A form of the Sovereignty Commission continues today in Mississippi. Ask Haley Barbour.

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Researchers Note -- changes in file access

Benjamin Greenberg wrote:

Have you noted the change to the SC online website? A while back I noticed that the link to the site had changed. What I didn't realize until tonight is that the MDAH web site's method of forming links to the files has also changed. None of my bookmarks to individual files worked. Like you, I'm sure, I have hundreds and hundreds of files bookmarked. After some minutes of panicking, I compared one of my bookmarks with the url for a file I retrieved under the new system. I realized that with a small addition to the old versions of the urls you will get the file you are looking for.

In the old system, urls look like this:

http://www.mdah.state.ms.us/arlib/contents/er/result.php?
image=/data/sov_commission/images/png/cd09/067902.png&
otherstuff=10|60|0|5|1|1|1|67030|

In the new system they look like this:

http://www.mdah.state.ms.us/arlib/contents/er/sovcom/result.php ?image=/data/sov_commission/images/
png/cd09/067902.png&otherstuff=10|60|0|5|1|1|1|67030|

The only difference is the part you see in bold, "sovcom/"

If you insert "sovecom/" after the "er/" in your bookmark urls, you should get the file you want. I'm relieved to know that it's still possible to access things I've bookmarked, but obviously, this is incredibly inconvenient. It's a terrible disservice to researchers who use the SC Online system.

Ben

--
Benjamin Greenberg
http://hungryblues.us

Here's the url for the Sovereignty Commission online archives:
http://mdah.state.ms.us/arlib/contents/er/sovcom/

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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