Names Sometimes Associated With JFK Assassination Found in Mississippi Sovereignty Commission Files

Looking for names sometimes associated for various reasons with the JFK assassination?? Well, I can't say look no further -- because I have the ultimate guide. However -- Here’s a partial list of some pretty interesting names that can be found in the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission files. (I will update this list as I run into more names.)

I think it's quite fascinating that any records on these folks were collected, since most weren't Mississippi residents. Anyway, I've included one or two links for each name. None are particularly representative of what is in the Commission's treasure chest; But take a look; there are some real gems.

Remember, when using these files look for all sorts of spellings and combinations of names. Even Guy Banister's contract employee, John D. Sullivan, spelled the old coot's name with two n's! Also, all of the files are not thoroughly indexed, so names can appear in reports but not be found through the main index. SUSAN

Here's the link for a basic name searjch./http://mdah.state.ms.us/arrec/digital_archives/sovcom/

Remember, this database was built pre-computer days. Try several possible spellings to a name when using it. For instanc, J Egar Hoover has three different versions.

Guy Banister

Jack Brown (as named by Joe Milteer). 

Robert DePugh

Wickliffe P. Draper 

James O. Eastland

David Ferriie

Jim Garrison

J. Edgar Hoover

H.L. Hunt

Lamar Hunt

Lyndon B. Johnson

John F. Kennedy

Robert F. Kennedy

John Lechner (name foud in Richard Nagell’s notebook) 

Carlos Marcello

Robert D. Morrow


Robert Morris

Lee Harvey Oswald

(Fair Play For Cuba)

Marina Oswald


Henry Palmer

David A. Phillips

Alex Rorke, Jr. 

John Roselli

John H. Rousselot

Jack Ruby


John C. Satterfield

Jay Sourwine (note: Pacifica Foundation was chaired by Andrew Goodman's father)

Clay Shaw

Willie Somersett

John D. Sullivan

Robert Surrey

Wesley Swift

Ned Touchstone

Gen. Edwin Walker

As Long as Kennedy is in power -- (Mississippi and JFK)

In June of 1963, the University of Mississippi must decide whether or not to block the entrance of a second black student to the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss). But "so long as the Kennedy's are in power, situations like this will have to be endured..." notes an investigator for the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission. Did he know anything about the upcoming assassination? Most of the Commission's investigators had ties to the FBI, so it's a fair question.

Check out this report --

 http://bit.ly/X8FIT3

http://mdah.state.ms.us/arrec/digital_archives/sovcom/result.php?image=/data/sov_commission/images/png/cd01/005634.png&otherstuff=1|75|0|12|1|1|1|5481|

Just put up a "history" of the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission (see Pages, at the left). Will be putting up some related links over the next few days.

Here's one -- some "stats" gathered after the murder of Emmett Till, over Mississippi murders...

http://mdah.state.ms.us/arrec/digital_archives/sovcom/result.php?image=/data/sov_commission/images/png/cd08/062856.png&otherstuff=10|5|0|4|4|1|1|62031|#

Sen. John McCain: Mississippi Roots

I ran into a fascinating article about Sen. John McCain --

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article and accompanying video about the McCain families in Carroll County, Mississippi: the descendants of John McCain's ancestors who still remain in the area where those ancestors owned a cotton plantation (Teoc), and the descendants of the slaves who worked that plantation and took their owners' surname. The McCains have a biannual reunion where family members of both groups of descendants meet.

Charles McCain, grandson of a slave at Teoc, the white McCain plantation, was active in the Civil Rights Movement:

Charles McCain was a central figure in the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. When civil-rights workers swarmed Mississippi in 1964, the black McCains housed white activists and received bomb threats and harassing calls.

Continued --
-----

Link to Charles McCain record in the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission

Link to Charlie McCain

To find all McCain Links -- Mississippi Sovereignty Commission

Who Killed Martin Luther King, Jr.?

Stuart Wexler and Larry Hancock, authors of an upcoming book, "Seeking Armageddon: The Effort to Kill Martin Luther King Jr.," are exploring evidence that members of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi were involved.

"It's becoming more and more evident they had the motive, the means and the opportunity to assassinate Dr. King, and in fact, that had been a major goal of theirs for years," Wexler said.

Some proof can be found in FBI and Miami police documents that suggest White Knights members may have helped jam Memphis police radios when King was shot on April 4, 1968.

Vivian is among civil rights leaders gathering today in Memphis to remember

King and to sign their support for legislation that would create a Justice Department unit aimed at solving the unpunished killings from the civil rights era.

The House passed the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act by an overwhelming margin of 422-2, but the bill has stalled in the Senate, where U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., has put a "hold" on the legislation, putting it in limbo. He has cited the cost - $10 million a year to examine civil rights killings before 1970 and $3.5 million to help local law enforcement conduct investigations.

In the '50s and '60s, King was friends with Mississippi NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers.

In 1963, a member of the White Knights shot Evers in the back outside his Jackson home, and King attended the funeral.

Continued, from the Hattiesburg American

And from Sovereignty Commission records, there were many files kept on MLK and some on the White Knights, too.

Here are a few posts.

A memo on King dated Jan. 18, 1963 from Carl Braden: "...people ... the CORE group are very jealous of Martin's connection with a group like ours ..."

"Reward for the bodies of" Martin Luther King and others...

List of Civil Rights Disturbances in Mississippi over a decade

Memo to governor, Nov. 1957, Martin Luther King to attend meeting in Mound Bayou

White Knights "no cause for concern" to Mississippi Sovereignty Commission

Mississippi Cold Case; Louis Allen

Reward offered in 1964 slaying; efforts to find Louis Allen's killer increase after solving other cold cases

Family members of Louis Allen, a Liberty resident shot to death 43 years ago in what the FBI is investigating as a civil rights-era slaying, are offering $20,000 for information leading to the arrest of his killers.

Allen's namesake grandson, Louis Allen Jr., said family members suspect the killer is alive and that other people were involved.

The Allen case is one of more than 100 civil rights-era slaying under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice. Louis Allen Jr. said he hopes the reward offered by the Mississippi Religious Leadership Conference will spark more interest in finding justice for his grandfather.

Efforts to solve the case have gained steam, following prosecutions in other civil rights-era cold cases, including two life sentences handed down this summer to James Ford Seale of Roxie in the May 2, 1964, kidnapping of Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore. The teens were beaten and drowned.

Story Continued --

From Sovereignty Commission files, here are several links

Initial report filed by the investigator, A. L Hopkins

Rev. E. H. Hurst is "cleared of blame"

Five more deaths reported; citizens councils says it is not responsible

More links can be found at the Sovereignty Commission website when searching under Lewis Allen ...

The "mysterious killing of the only witness to the murder of a negro by a white man" report by investigator Tom Scarbrough

More files can be found under both spellings. sk

Medgar Evers remembered for achievements

KNOWN TODAY more for his struggles for civil rights in Mississippi and his untimely death at the hands of an assassin than for his writings, Medgar Evers nevertheless left behind an impressive record of achievement.

Medgar Wiley Evers was born July 2, 1925, near Decatur, Mississippi, and attended school there until he was inducted into the army in 1943. After serving in Normandy, he attended Alcorn College (now Alcorn State University), majoring in business administration.

While at Alcorn, he was a member of the debate team, the college choir, and the football and track teams. He also held several student offices and was editor of the campus newspaper for two years and the annual for one year.

In recognition of his accomplishments at Alcorn, he was listed in Who's Who in American Colleges.

At Alcorn he met Myrlie Beasley of Vicksburg and they married on December 24, 1951. He received his BA degree the following semester and they moved to Mound Bayou, Mississippi, during which time Evers began to establish local chapters of the NAACP throughout the delta and organising boycotts of gasoline stations that refused to allow Blacks to use their restrooms.

He worked in Mound Bayou as an insurance agent until 1954, the year a Supreme Court decision ruled school segregation unconstitutional.

Continued --
* * * * *
The Sovereignty Commission spent years spying on Medgar Evers and here are just a few examples of records you can find ...

Evers Complains to Civil Rights Commission when Madison County black is shot to death by local sheriff

Medgar Evers makes a "strong NAACP address"

1959 File: Evers labeled "Integration Agitator" by Sov. Comm. Spy

Lots more under three separate batches of files ... all equally disgusting.

Land of the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission

View Album

Get your own

For you to enjoy -- pictures of the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta from over the year. Susan

Blog Across the Mississippi Delta Civil Rights History Tour

* * * * *
AS FREEDOM VOLUNTEERS packed up and left Mississippi in 1964, brutality and murder kept going on. Some stories made it into the news and into later history books, but in smaller Delta towns several hundred miles north of Jackson, many incidents remain only as whispers among those who once picked the cotton ...


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Bloggers Set to Revisit Mississippi Delta Civil Rights People and Places

Mount. Pleasant, Iowa (USA), May 29, 2007--Two friends from Cleveland, Mississippi and Mount Pleasant, Iowa, are spending ten days roaming and blogging the Mississippi Delta while visiting civil rights people and places. Their pictures and stories will be placed daily at http://mississippimurders.com on the Internet. (Photo at left, courthouse in Belzoni, home of the Rev. George Lee who was murdered in 1955.)

Margaret Block, an early civil rights advocate, and Susan Klopfer, author of Where Rebels Roost; Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited, plan to roam the Mississippi Delta starting June 1, visiting people and places of the modern civil rights movement. “We'll be traveling in and out of the Delta for ten days as we photograph important spots and talk about the region's history,” Klopfer said.

“We plan to visit the towns of Money, Drew, Glendora, Greenwood and other spots connected to the murders of Emmett Till, Birdia Keglar, Adlena Hamlett and Cleve McDowell, among others who were killed for their civil rights activities or just for being black.”

Block, an early SNCC volunteer, spent her first years out of high school in the small town of Charleston where they will kick off their blogging venture by attending a program June 1 honoring Keglar. The NAACP leader was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan in 1966 on her way home from a Jackson meeting with Sen. Robert Kennedy. Keglar once saved Block’s life by moving her out of Charleston in a hearse from the funeral home that Keglar managed.

“We have very few scheduled stops, but we will also leave the Delta to attend the funeral of Mrs. Chaney, James Chaney's mother in Meridian,” Block said. The two also plan to visit with Unita Blackwell, Mississippi’s first black woman mayor, and will take pictures as they roam the historical Brooks Farm, Parchman penitentiary, and Clarksdale, home of Aaron Henry, an early civil rights leader who Block also knew.

The two women met when Klopfer was researching a book on the civil rights movement, “Where Rebels Roost; Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited.” Klopfer was living on the grounds of Parchman at the time, where her husband was the chief psychologist.

...Contact:
Susan Klopfer
775-340-3585 (cell) sklopfer@gmail.com
http://mississippimurders.blogspot.com
http://themiddleoftheinternet.com

# # #

Indictment in Jimmie Lee Jackson slaying

MARION, Ala. - A 73-year-old retired state trooper was indicted Wednesday in the 1965 shooting death of a black man — a killing that set in motion the historic civil rights protests in Selma and led to passage of the Voting Rights Act.

District Attorney Michael Jackson said a grand jury returned an indictment in the case. He would not identify the person charged or specify the offense until the indictment is served, which could take a few days. But a lawyer for former Trooper James Bonard Fowler said he had been informed that the retired lawman had been charged.

It took the grand jury only two hours to return the indictment in the slaying of 26-year-old Jimmie Lee Jackson, who was shot by Fowler during a civil rights protest that turned into a club-swinging melee.

The case was little-known as a civil rights-era cold case but had major historical consequences.

Continued

Mississippi Governor blocked documents, FBI says

From CBC News

Documents obtained by CBC News show that the Mississippi governor at the time of the 1964 race killings of two African-American teenagers censored a news release related to the case and kept photos of their remains from the media at the height of the civil rights movement.

Paul B. Johnson Jr., who died last year, became governor of Mississippi in January 1964. The Democratic politician was known for his support of segregation, and had personally blocked the way of James Meredith, the first black student to register at the University of Mississippi, as Meredith tried to make his way on campus.

FBI documents show that Johnson personally influenced aspects of the Charles Moore and Henry Dee case.

Continued ..
-----
HOWEVER, it was Gov. Ross Barnett who blocked Meredith in his attempt to enter Ole Miss, not Gov. Johnson as CBC reports.

Meanwhile, Sovereignty Commission records are few with respect to Mr. Moore and Mr. Dee. Here are several

Charges dropped against two men accused of "Torso Slayings"

Klansman Seale questioned about murder of Moore and Dee

Photos of Klansmen, including Seale


What's interesting, is all of the investigation records that appear to be missing. Where are they? Could they still be in individual homes? Are they included among Sen. James Eastland's files housed at Ole Miss???