Mississippi & JFK: Links

John Bevilaqua has been investigating the Kennedy assassination and Wickliffe P. Draper for almost 20 years. He offered some interesting observations in Dec. 09 on deeppoliticsforum.com, including the following ...

"Sam Crutchfield was also the attorney of record for the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission during the period when Wickliffe P. Draper provided secretive funding to the MSC using his J. P. Morgan trust fund account as documented by recent Pulitzer Prize winning author, Doug Blackmon in a Wall Street Journal article published on June 11, 1999.

"Three of the four major funds transfers from Draper to the MSC occurred either right after the assassination of Medgar Evers, Jr., in Mississippi in June 1963, just before the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, in Mobile, Alabama, in September of 1963, killing several choir girls, or just before the murders of the Freedom Riders: Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman in Philadelphia, Mississippi in June of 1964.

"Draper was linked to the Medgar Evers, Jr. murder via Senator James Eastland, from Mississippi, who headed up the Draper Genetics Committee for the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. Evers' killer was KKK and NSRP member, Byron DeLa Beckwith, who was visited often in jail after he was arrested for the murder of Medgar Evers, Jr. by Maj. Gen. Edwin Walker who had organized and led the riots at Ole Miss when James Meredith attempted to enroll there as the first Afro-American student.

"Maj. Gen. Edwin A. Walker was specifically named by Jack Ruby, who shot Lee Harvey Oswald, in his Warren Commission testimony as being directly involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

"Byron DeLa Beckwith whose middle name was only one word and pronounced like "delay" and not like "day-lah" was also a close friend of Joseph A. Milteer a racist leader in both the KKK and The National States Rights Party (NSRP), who predicted the exact way that JFK would meet his ultimate demise a few weeks before the assassination actually occurred: "...from a tall building with a high-powered rifle."

"This statement was made by Milteer and secretly tape recorded by Willie Somersett, an informant for the City of Miami Police Intelligence Division. This intelligence gathering incident was arranged by Lt. Gracey Lockhart from that department while Somersett and Milteer were attending a Congress of Freedom convention in Indiana.

"The Congress of Freedom was started in the early 1950's by Willis A. Carto with financial support from Wickliffe P. Draper. Conventions of the COF featured rabble-rousing, hate filled and vitriolic anti-Kennedy speeches made by Dr. Revilo P. Oliver who was later referred to in the novel, The Manchurian Candidate, by Richard Condon in 1959. Some of his bombastic, vindictive and hate filled tape recorded anti-Kennedy speeches can be heard at this white supremacist website: http://www.revilo-oliver.com."
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Here are some Mississippi Sovereignty Commission files that support some of what this well-known (and controversial) JFK assassination scholar says:

http://mdah.state.ms.us/arrec/digital_archives/sovcom/result.php?image=/data/sov_commission/images/png/cd07/051254.png&otherstuff=6|70|0|105|1|1|1|50529|

http://mdah.state.ms.us/arrec/digital_archives/sovcom/result.php?image=/data/sov_commission/images/png/cd12/113710.png&otherstuff=97|15|0|15|2|1|1|112453|

http://mdah.state.ms.us/arrec/digital_archives/sovcom/result.php?image=/data/sov_commission/images/png/cd12/113710.png&otherstuff=97|15|0|15|2|1|1|112453|

http://mdah.state.ms.us/arrec/digital_archives/sovcom/result.php?image=/data/sov_commission/images/png/cd12/113717.png&otherstuff=97|15|0|17|2|1|1|112460|

http://mdah.state.ms.us/arrec/digital_archives/sovcom/result.php?image=/data/sov_commission/images/png/cd12/113719.png&otherstuff=97|15|0|17|3|1|1|112462|

These links and others were used to support what I wrote in Where Rebels Roost:


Both researchers (Tucker and Blackmon) met by coincidence in Jackson, Miss. while looking into boxes of Sovereignty Commission files newly released to the public.

“Blackmon was the only national reporter that I know of who seemed interested in Draper,” Tucker said.

Blackmon, searching for bottom line information, and after looking through the treasure trove of ledgers, invoices and correspondence recording the commission’s finances, reported that

"[R]ecords show large transfers of money by Morgan on behalf of a client who turns out be a wealthy and reclusive New Yorker named Wycliffe Preston Draper. Mr. Draper used his private banker to transfer nearly $215,00 in stock and cash to the Sovereignty Commission for use in its fight against the Civil Rights Act. The entire budget for the effort amounted to about $300,000.

"Adjusted for inflation, Mr. Draper's contributions would be worth more than $1.1 million today. The Sovereignty Commission files do more than simply document one man's role. They show that some of the most virulent resistance to civil-rights progres in the 1960s was supported and funded from the North, not just the South. The files also highlight the ethical issues that confront an institution like Morgan Guaranty, the private-banking unit of J. P Morgan & Co., when it is drawn, even unwittingly, into a client's support for repugnant causes.

"When Mr. Draper died in 1972, Morgan was an executor of his estate, overseeing distributions totaling about $5 million to two race-oriented foundations. The primary beneficiary was the Pioneer Fund, an organization Mr. Draper helped found and which became known in recent years for funding research cited in "The Bell Curve," a book arguing that blacks are genetically inclined to be less intelligent than whites or Asians. In his will, Mr. Draper instructed that after his death, the Pioneer Fund use Morgan for financial advice; the fund did so for two decades.xxv

"Embedded within Sovereignty Commission files was a note to Erle Johnston regarding a phone call from Satterfield, and instructing Johnston to send a telegram to “Mr. Rossiter” in the Trust Department of Morgan Guaranty in New York. “Satterfield had a call from Draper’s attorney Weyher about the telegram” regarding stock transfers and sales, and “the banks need to be advised what action to take.”xxvi

"Most of the money supporting Mississippi’s fight against the 1964 Civil Rights Act, so it turned out, came from outside of Mississippi, from a Northern neo-Nazi, racist “philanthropist” with a focused racist agenda.xxvi

"Satterfield and others used these funds for putting together an impressive marketing campaign that emphasized a mix of speeches, publicity, direct mail, newspaper advertising, radio and television advertising, ghostwritten editorials and pres releases."
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Spending a little more time, lately, I found some more interesting files that relate to these topics... focusing on Satterfield, who died on 5 May 1981 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Satterfield headed the Mississippi Bar and for two terms headed the National Bar Association.

http://mdah.state.ms.us/arrec/digital_archives/sovcom/result.php?image=/data/sov_commission/images/png/cd01/005556.png&otherstuff=1|74|0|7|1|1|1|5404|

http://mdah.state.ms.us/arrec/digital_archives/sovcom/result.php?image=/data/sov_commission/images/png/cd07/051239.png&otherstuff=6|70|0|100|1|1|1|50514|

http://mdah.state.ms.us/arrec/digital_archives/sovcom/result.php?image=/data/sov_commission/images/png/cd10/076396.png&otherstuff=99|36|0|36|1|1|1|75424|

http://mdah.state.ms.us/arrec/digital_archives/sovcom/result.php?image=/data/sov_commission/images/png/cd10/081485.png&otherstuff=99|50|0|15|1|1|1|80446|

http://mdah.state.ms.us/arrec/digital_archives/sovcom/result.php?image=/data/sov_commission/images/png/cd10/082062.png&otherstuff=99|51|0|15|1|1|1|81020|

http://mdah.state.ms.us/arrec/digital_archives/sovcom/result.php?image=/data/sov_commission/images/png/cd11/084130.png&otherstuff=99|67|0|5|1|1|1|83072|