Fr. Nathaniel and the Greenwood, Mississippi Movement (civil rights)

Interesting reading -- Fr. Nathaniel and the Greenwood Movement.

Rev. Nathaniel Maciejewski, O.F.M. (St. Francis Mission - Greenwood, MS)

Here is a fascinating link to a scholarly paper by PAUL T. MURRAY, professor of sociology at Siena College in Loudonville, New York. This article is part of a larger research project on the involvement of 
Catholics in the Civil Rights Movement

http://mdah.state.ms.us/pubs/JMH_fall2010_murray.pdf

and a link to a Mississippi Sovereignty Commission file on Fr. Nathaniel

CLICK HERE

You can also search for this file, here.

Academic Smearing at its "Unlevel Best" -- Loads of Sovereignty Commission Records

The man who once taught sociology at Tougaloo College under the name of John Salter, a fine academic and brilliant writer who was frequently smeared by the Sovereignty Commission, takes time to reflect.

Hunter Gray to Bear, 6:17 AM (2 hours ago)

I much like Fall in the West. Here in the higher altitudes of the Mountain States,
the air is living-crispy during the days and the nights call for our wolf robe or at least my colorful Pendleton blankets. Occasional rain and some snow slowly bring deer, elk, and moose down into the somewhat lower winter ranges -- not far at all above us right here -- accompanied by lions,bobcats, coyotes, even an occasional wolf. Bears do their final fattening up for their long den-sleep -- which will carry them far feelings-wise from oncoming cold weather with its cutting winds and inevitable snow. But the sky can be as blue as turquoise, the mornings always promising good luck, and the slowly dimming early evenings with their fading sunlight and faint haze and creeping chill have a strangely appealing and mystical feel. The nights can be downright witchy.

For me, it's the Time of my Coming of Age Bear.

http://hunterbear.org/coming%20of%20age%20[western%20memoir.%20htm.htm

HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis
Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk
Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´
and Ohkwari'

Our Lair of Hunterbear website is now almost 12 years old. It contains a great deal of primary, first-hand material on Native Americans, Civil Rights Movement, union labor, and organizing techniques -- and much more. Check it out and its vast number of component pieces. The front page itself -- the initial cover page -- has about 36 representative links.

www.hunterbear.org
----

John Salter and the Sovereignty Commission

Here are several Sovereignty Commission links, to get you warmed up... (Note: Records under Salter and Salters. Remember, these files are ancient and tricky. Always expand out searches, remembering they may come in multiple sets under variations on the name.)

http://mdah.state.ms.us/arrec/digital_archives/sovcom/result.php?image=/data/sov_commission/images/png/cd01/000155.png&otherstuff=1|3|0|11|2|1|1|153|#


http://mdah.state.ms.us/arrec/digital_archives/sovcom/result.php?image=/data/sov_commission/images/png/pages/135250.png&otherstuff=1|73|0|7|1|1|1|5347|#

http://mdah.state.ms.us/arrec/digital_archives/sovcom/result.php?image=/data/sov_commission/images/png/cd01/005541.png&otherstuff=1|73|0|21|1|1|1|5389|#


http://mdah.state.ms.us/arrec/digital_archives/sovcom/result.php?image=/data/sov_commission/images/png/cd05/039726.png&otherstuff=3|74|2|16|2|1|1|39125|#


http://mdah.state.ms.us/arrec/digital_archives/sovcom/result.php?image=/data/sov_commission/images/png/cd01/005496.png&otherstuff=1|73|0|5|1|1|1|5345|#


Tons more files to go through. All fascinating... The main link is at http://mdah.state.ms.us/arrec/digital_archives/sovcom/

Don't ever discount the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission

I remember when I first started looking at Sovereignty Commission records. I read a quote, calling the investigators "keystone cops", back when the records were first made public. Reporters had done a quick look through records of prominent people and most likely, because many records had already been pulled and kept away from public view, or stolen, it looked like there was not much available. Thus -- reporters dismisssed the entire batch.

Not a smart thing to do. There is so much in the data base and it's fun just to pull anonymous records and start sniffing around. This evening, I was looking to see if there were any records available for a lawyer by the name of Lanier Foote. No luck so far -- but remember, not everything is indexed, so I will keep looking in the cracks.

But I did pull up this record -- not sure who exactly it is referencing, but take a look at the "research" done by the investigator. This person was obviously experienced, and it is chilling to watch how he was operating...

http://bit.ly/pup8Ma

or http://mdah.state.ms.us/arrec/digital_archives/sovcom/result.php?image=/data/sov_commission/images/png/cd02/010877.png&otherstuff=4|7|0|10|1|1|1|10646|#


No -- not all of these investigators were keystone cops...

Any black farmer terrorism stories in the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission files? Wouldn't surprise me!

It would not surprise me at all if I found some related files in the Sovereignty Commission records. Thought I would take a look this evening and will share anything I find. Would like to hear from anyone who finds something that relates to terrorizing black farmers in Mississippi (in earlier years than this particular settlement covers.)....sk


On Wed, Sep 1, 2010 at 4:14 PM, Dr John Boyd wrote:

For more than 10 years, tens of thousands of Black farmers have been denied justice and a share of a $1.25 billion government settlement as compensation for decades of discrimination in federal farm loan programs. Many have lost their farms waiting. Some have died waiting. And on Aug. 5, before going on its summer recess, the Senate prolonged the wait by failing to once again appropriate the funds to right this egregious wrong.


Consistent with an unfortunate pattern that has stalled Congressional action on everything from healthcare reform to unemployment benefits, the Senate is stuck in a stalemate over the Black farmers’ settlement due to partisan bickering over how it will be financed. But, as noted in a recent Reuters news story, “The measure brought to the floor included offsets required under congressional ‘pay-as-you-go’ rules mandating new spending be offset with cuts elsewhere so as not to add to the deficit.”

This is a clear case of political obstructionism and a violation of civil rights. Attorney General Eric Holder and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced the settlement in February. President Obama included money for it in his current budget. The House of Representatives approved the funds in July. But the Senate has repeatedly refused to add its final stamp of approval. According to John Boyd, Jr., President of the National Black Farmers Association, “It shows that some of the same treatment that happened to the Black farmers at the Department of Agriculture is transpiring with the Senate’s inaction to help Black farmers.”


The original class-action lawsuit, Pigford v. Glickman, filed in 1997 and settled in 1999, awarded $50,000 to Black farmers who were denied Department of Agriculture farm loans due to racial discrimination from 1983-1997. The government has already paid out more than $1 billion to 16,000 farmers. The new funding is for payments to as many as 70,000 farmers who were denied previous payouts because they missed the deadline for filing.


The Black farmers’ settlement bill has the support of the White House, the Agriculture Department, Senators and House members of both parties, the Congressional Black Caucus and the major civil rights organizations, including the National Urban League. The National Black Farmers Association has taken the fight to Capitol Hill on numerous occasions and has appealed to the White House for help.


When the February settlement was announced, CBC Chairwoman Barbara Lee and many others thought that justice had finally arrived. In a statement then she said, “I am encouraged that today’s settlement is an opportunity for Black farmers who were denied the benefit of USDA loans and programs to begin to be made whole.”


But justice continues to be denied. This is a travesty. The federal government has spent trillions on bailouts to banks, corporations and investment firms, but struggling black farmers have been left out in the cold. As John Boyd said, “It seems like the trains leaving the station in the Senate manage not to have the black farmers on them.” — (NNPA)


Marc Morial is president and CEO of the National Urban League.
-----------

It would not surprise me at all if I found some related files in the Sovereignty Commission records. Thought I would take a look this evening and will share anything I find. Would like to hear from anyone who finds something....sk

"Etheridge" "Ethridge" "Ethredge"; Mississippi Sovereignty Commission Files Not So Easy to Research

When the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission kept files on various people, the names often were misspelled. Thus, you will need to do multiple name guesses and searches. A good example are the files kept on a Clarion-Ledge columnist.

You will need to look under the names Etheridge, Ethredge, and Ethridge. Here are a few to play with -- these were found under Tom Ethridge.

http://mdah.state.ms.us/arrec/digital_archives/sovcom/result.php?image=/data/sov_commission/images/png/cd03/016100.png&otherstuff=3|9|2|38|1|1|1|15739|

Letter from Sovereignty Commission Director re the Ole Miss Law School that mentions the reporter

http://mdah.state.ms.us/arrec/digital_archives/sovcom/result.php?image=/data/sov_commission/images/png/cd01/004375.png&otherstuff=2|21|2|41|1|1|1|4259|

Letter to the editor re an angry Methodist Youth Minister over a column written by “Ethridge”

http://mdah.state.ms.us/arrec/digital_archives/sovcom/result.php?image=/data/sov_commission/images/png/cd04/028494.png&otherstuff=3|25|0|55|1|1|1|27984|

Letter about “Ethridge” column from The Methodist Interboard Council

These are fascinating files that give a good feeling for this segregationist reporter who was apparently throught quite well of by the state's spy agency -- the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission.
* * *

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."
* * * * *

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."
* * * * *

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|