Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, State Government Funded Racist Department: Investigator of Emmett Till's Murder Dies in Greenwood, Miss.

GREENWOOD, Miss. - John Ed Cothran, a former sheriff’s deputy who investigated the 1955 slaying of Emmett Till, which galvanized the civil rights movement, has died of heart failure. He was 93.

Cothran died Saturday at Grace Health and Rehab in Grenada, according to officials with Wilson & Knight Funeral Home in Greenwood.
Continued --

Photo taken September 27, 1962, Oxford, Mississippi.

Left to right: Sheriff John Henry Spencer, Pittsboro. Sheriff James Ira Grimsley, Pascagoula. Sheriff Bob Waller, Hattiesburg. Sheriff Billy Ferrell, Natchez (holding club). Sheriff Jimmy Middleton, Port Gibson. Deputy Sheriff James Wesley Garrison, Oxford. Sheriff John Ed Cothran, Greenwood.

Burial story --

Here are some links to Mississippi Sovereignty Commission files that mention Cothran's involvement in various investigations--

October 6, 1960, visit to Leflore County over voting issues

Feb. 19, 1965, news story on complaints of violence/federal police force

Meeting, April 7, 1961 with Sovereignty Commission investigator, Tom Scarbrough

March 17, 1961, Cothran warned by Sovereignty Commission that a group of Yale students will soon arrive for sit-ins

Feb. 7, 1963 Cothan warned of impending visit by Dick Gregory

Sovereignty Commission name search page (for 12 more records)

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

Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, State Government Funded Racist Department

Monday, March 24, 2008

Investigator of Emmett Till's Murder Dies in Greenwood, Miss.

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