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, March 26, 2013

Olen Burrage dies at 82; suspect in slayings of Mississippi civil rights workers

Olen Burrage, KKK, farmer -- Mississippi -- dies

Olen Burrage dies at 82; suspect in slayings of Mississippi civil rights workers

Burrage was acquitted in the deaths of 3 men whose bodies were found buried under a dam on his property in 1964. The case led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act.

Reported March 24, 2013|Times Staff and Wire Reports

Olen Burrage, a farmer and Ku Klux Klan member who owned the Mississippi land where the bullet-riddled bodies of three civil rights workers were found buried in the 1960s, has died. He was 82.

Burrage, who was acquitted on civil rights charges related to the murders, died March 15 at a medical center in Meridian, Miss., the McClain-Hays Funeral Home announced. The cause was not released.

LINK -- http://www.latimes.com/membership/

Interesting links in the Mississisppi Sovereignty Commission files --

http://mdah.state.ms.us/arrec/digital_archives/sovcom/result.php?image=/data/sov_commission/images/png/cd05/038329.png&otherstuff=2|112|1|49|2|1|1|37735|

http://mdah.state.ms.us/arrec/digital_archives/sovcom/result.php?image=/data/sov_commission/images/png/cd09/068278.png&otherstuff=10|60|0|30|22|1|1|67401|

http://mdah.state.ms.us/arrec/digital_archives/sovcom/result.php?image=/data/sov_commission/images/png/cd05/038408.png&otherstuff=2|112|2|7|2|1|1|37814|

"Swift Moving FBi Agents Arrest 21 Across the State"
http://mdah.state.ms.us/arrec/digital_archives/sovcom/result.php?image=/data/sov_commission/images/png/cd05/038331.png&otherstuff=2|112|1|49|4|1|1|37737|

"2 Neshoba Officals Return to Law Duty"
http://mdah.state.ms.us/arrec/digital_archives/sovcom/result.php?image=/data/sov_commission/images/png/cd09/068035.png&otherstuff=10|60|0|19|1|1|1|67163|
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Lots more in Mississippi Sovereignty Files under under Olen Burrage, Olen L. Burrage, Olen Lovell Burrage

Search here:

http://mdah.state.ms.us/arrec/digital_archives/sovcom/#basicname
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Mississippi Burning Background (from Wikipedia)

"The Mississippi Civil Rights Workers Murders involve the lynching of James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael "Mickey" Schwerner by white Mississippiansduring the American Civil Rights Movement.

On the night of June 21–22, 1964, Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner were threatened, intimidated, beaten, shot, and buried by members of the Mississippi White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the Neshoba County's Sheriff Office and the Philadelphia Police Department located in Philadelphia, Mississippi. After the largest and most televised search at the time, their bodies were found 44 days later in an earthen dam near the murder site.

Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner's murders sparked national outrage and spurred the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. African Americans and other minorities in Mississippi, as throughout the former Confederacy, lived under racial segregation and Jim Crow laws, and had been essentially disfranchised since the passage of the state constitution of 1890.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation referred to this investigation as Mississippi Burning or MIBURN. Due to the conspiracy's sophistication and complexity, the MIBURN case is renowned as one of the Bureau's greatest accomplishments." (Wikipedia -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_civil_rights_workers'_murders )

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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