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.
The latest issue of the New Yorker features a portfolio of photographs by the British photographer Platon. The portfolio, accompanied by text written by David Remnick, includes photographs of the Little Rock Nine, members of the Greensboro Four, members of SNCC, and relatives of Medgar Evers.
It pairs these images with historic photographs of iconic civil rights leaders like Ella Baker and Fred Shuttlesworth. In the context of a movement whose success owes a debt to the power of the visual image, it is a remarkable and moving series of photographs.
You will be amazed at how many of these folks have Sovereignty Commission files ... Take a look ... Here are a few links to get started:
Fifty years ago, four black university students entered the Woolworths in Greensboro, sat down at the "whites only" lunch counter, and refused to budge. The sit-ins continued for six months
Meanwhile in Mississippi, the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission was collecting news clips of "South Carolina Incidents" and other reports on the status of the civil rights movement in Greensboro and elsewhere ...
In 1943, at age 23, Louis Allen enlisted in the Army. He drove ammunition trucks in New Guinea during World War II. While there, Louis also started boxing. His burly 5-foot-8-inch, 220-pound frame made him a formidable fighter. In July 1944, he received an honorable discharge. According to his discharge papers, his character was rated “excellent.” The Army gave Louis $300 in “mustering out pay.”
Back in Liberty, Louis returned to the tenuous privilege of being a black person favored by the whites of his community. He established a successful logging business with loyal customers of both races. His fortunes changed, however, on Sept. 25, 1961.
The FBI needs to open all of its files and then it needs to send a representative down to Mississippi and start collecting Sovereignty Commission Files. What do you think??
Mississippi student gets in trouble for hanging up picture of Dr. King (1971). This is interesting, because I received reports that a Cleveland, Mississippi first-grader was warned he would be sent home if he brought to school a picture of President Barack Obama. This happened right after the election.
U.S. Sen. John Kerry plans to introduce legislation next week that would pave the way for the release of thousands of FBI documents on the life and death of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Kerry said the bill, which failed in 2006, can pass this year in honor of King. "I want the world to know what he stood for," Kerry said. "And I want his personal history preserved and examined by releasing all of his records."
The bill calls for creating a Martin Luther King Records Collection at the National Archives that would include all government records related to King. The bill also would create a five-member independent review board that would identify and make public all documents from agencies including the FBI - just as a review board in 1992 made public documents related to the 1963 John F. Kennedy assassination. ---
This is very good news. The Sovereignty Commission files, of course, are filled with reports on Dr. King. Later today (when I have some free time), I will start posting some links...susan
This reported December 27, 2009 by The Clarion Ledger:
Former Rep. Charles Wilson Capps Jr. of Cleveland, once one of the most powerful members of the Mississippi Legislature, has died at the age of 84.
Known across the state simply as "Charlie," the cigar- chomping Democrat from the Delta was renowned for his leadership and charisma.
Capps, the longest-serving member in the Mississippi House, died Friday at Bolivar Medical Center after years of deteriorating health. He served in the House from 1972 until he retired in 2005.
"Charlie was one of the most engaged-in-life human beings I have ever known. He had a big heart and kept a positive outlook," said Rep. Steve Holland, D-Plantersville. "He cut a wide path for a long, long time, and his legacy is one for the ages."
Capps was chairman of the House Appropriations Committee and Constitution Committee, and also served on the Military Affairs, Ethics, and Insurance committees. During his years over the Appropriations Committee, Capps was regarded as one of the most powerful people in the Legislature.
"He had control over the money, but never tried to throw his power around," said political columnist and veteran journalist Bill Minor.
Minor recalls Capps as being a person with a "wide capacity to get along with everyone," and a person who loved to trade stories over a glass of whiskey.
"It was his likability which made him able to survive the sharp break in the Legislature (between Democrats and Republicans). Capps' personality was such, he was able to mend the two sides together," Minor said.
Holland, who served with Capps for 24 years, beginning when Holland was 26 years old, said Capps was like a father to him. Capps' two biggest loves were higher education and the Delta, he said.
In December 1964, Capps called for support of Neshoba County Sheriff Lawrence Rainey who had recently been arrested in connection with the murders of civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner.
Capps was sheriff of Bolivar County, Mississippi from 1964-68 and president of the Mississippi Sheriff Association in 1964-1965.
Capps opposed the 1994 prosecution of Byron De La Beckwith, the murderer of Medgar Evers. (In 1994) Rep. Charlie Capps Jr., a longtime member of the Mississippi legislature and chairman of its powerful House Appropriations Committee, wrote in his individual capacity to Ed Peters (then Hinds Co. District Attorney):
I cannot imagine your purpose, but for whatever reason, your indictment and proposed trial of Mr. Beckwith has done great and irreparable harm to our state. The State of Mississippi and thousands of private citizens have worked for several decades in an effort to change our image nationally, and I believe that this trial will destroy 30 years of work overnight. (DeLaughter, Bobby. Never Too Late. p.232)
Charles Capps, RIP. *** Might be fun to dig through some more of Capps Sovereignty Commission files...
But like Eastland and others, the good stuff is in someone's basement...
Heard of Infragard? I had not heard of this by-invitation-only group that is a citizens/fbi operation. Those who "belong" get secret information from the government and have special authorizations to (?)
You can try to join your state organization, but good luck. Sounds pretty disgusting if you're at all into the Bill of Rights. I'm going to send in an application and see what happens. Will report what happens.
BTW, Ventura's new conspiracy cablevision program is quite good. Better investigative reporting than what's done by regular media.
So -- if you thought the Sovereignty Commission was limited to Mississippi, I guess we're learning it was just a good model for the rest of the country.
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:
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.
Marching in Grenada, Miss. (Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement)
Dear Blog Readers:
I get wonderful e-mail from people who are interested in the Emmett Till story and related civil rights history. The best email, of course, comes from those who share their personal history of what it was like to be involved in the modern civil rights movement.
Here is a powerful message that I recently received from a Grenada, Miss. blogger:
I will be visiting the Emmett Till website. I have visited Money, MS and have seen the store which was still standing 5 years ago.
I am currently in Baghdad but I'll be home to Washington DC in another week or so and I'll look forward to reading your book. I want to work with our JRHS group to understand our history -- of all our citizens -- so we can start talking about a new future for Mississippi. My dream is to go back home and try to make a difference. That is the dream of many.
Charles Latham is one who has done that. I'd like to get more stories published of those that have gone home and what their perspective is for the future. I re-read Charles email to the JRHS Group from 5 years ago and it is a powerful statement.
You had to be there at the time to understand exactly how dangerous it was for a black child to try to go to a white school. I could visualize Martin Luther King Jr. shaking the hands of the children that morning of September 20, 1966, before they left to go to the schools.
As a father of three I do not know that I could do that -- but I also don't know that I could stand in my child's way if they want to stand up for what they thought was right. It was courage on an unprecedented scale and it was that courage, jijutsued by the beating of the children into a national outrage, that changed the South.
MMaxey * * * *
So here is the story (printed with permission) that Michael Maxey (MMaxey) refers to, with a short introduction by Maxey:
Charles Latham is an African American alumnus of John Rundle High School. Charles was in the Class of 1971. He left Grenada and this email tells his story and why he came back home. The photograph that Charles refers to in the email is of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr, escorting children to school on September 20, 1966. He was one of the black students who attended Lizzie Horn Elementary that day. I've copied Charles on this email.
Michael Maxey JRHS 1970
Email From: "Charles Latham" To: JRHS Group Subject: RE: JRHS Website Update >Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2004 11:27:33 -0800
Fellow JRHS Alumni:
My name is Charles Latham (class of '71), although I didn't know you all personally, I do remember your names and had classes with some of you. I was in the band and played trombone when Mr. Mullens was the director. I have lived and worked San Diego, Ca. since 1975.
I really appreciate the comments and the photo by Mary Gene Boteler, it brought back memories for me. And if ya'll don't mind, I'd like to share some of them with you. The girl on our left is Grace Lemon (my former sister-in-law). I remember Mrs. Lemon having a copy of the photo and a copy of the magazine the story came out in. I was also in that line that day. That day was a significant emotional event for me.
Before the march began, we all stood in line in front of our church (Bell Flower A.M.E) for an opportunity to shake Dr. King's hand. When my turn came, I remember thinking no matter what we had to go through for equality, it would be worth it. Because this man made us believe that he was there for us and would die for his beliefs.
Before that day I was content with the way things were. We lived and worshiped in our own community. Went to our own schools and played with our own friends (sounds familiar?). Even when we went to the movies and had to sit in the balcony and go outside for concessions (rain or shine) I just thought that was the way it was. I didn't realize how nice and comfortable it was downstairs. Or even that we had a right to do so.
When I would see that "third" restroom marked "colored" I had no problem using it, because that's the way it was. When I would stand in line at stores waiting to pay for merchandise and the clerk would look past me to assist a white customers first, I still waited patiently. But after that day, things were different. I don't mean that Grenada had changed, but I had. My way of thinking had.
Suddenly, I started to ask why? And later challenging the status quo.
I remember the first day we had to go to JRHS. I was determine to make new friends and live the dream Dr. King had spoken of. I remember meeting Diane Einkner and talking to her about JRHS. She was telling me about the school, where things were and how things were.
I remember people talking about us (both black and white). The fact that two young people were trying to be examples of how things should be. I remember sitting in the back of the class with Chuck Hancock and a couple of his friends joking and having fun. I don't remember all the guys names forgive I'm getting old er). Some of you even hung out with me and invited me over to your homes.Sometimes I wondered what if their parents came home and saw me there?
I also realized that those of you who chose to interact with me personally were taking a chance too. I appreciated that. Because I learned a valuable lesson that has helped me until this day. That is, I shouldn't hold all people accountable for the actions of a few.
Recently I was contacted by a reporter with the San Diego Tribune. He is doing a story on African-Americans who are cashing out of the SD area and moving back to the south. After 33 years, I've been blessed to be able to retire and go back home. I've even hired Ronnie Collins' younger brother Odie to build our dream home. The reporter interviewed my family last night. His interview with me has led him to Grenada. Where he is scheduled to go there next week to talk to others who have also moved back to Grenada from SD.
One lady, who was originally from Itta Bena and lived in SD for forty years, purchased a home over the internet (sight unseen) will be featured in the story. Ray Branscome, Joe Lee III and the honorable Diane Freelon will also be interviewed.
I am proud to be a Grenadian and look forward to going back there and contributing to the city's success. Grenada has come a long way in just forty years. And I still believe that we all (God's children) have a responsibility to make this world a better place. And I try to do that one relationship at a time. When the time comes that we do have a reunion, I will be happy to assist in any way I can.
May God bless you all. Respectfully,
Charles H. Latham * * *
As if turns out, Charles Latham's name does appear in Sovereignty Commission records. Here are several links, to get started:
Delta at night... good time for suspicious activities...
The U.S. Civil Rights Movement as an Insurgency: This is interesting:
"Most Americans fail to appreciate that the Civil Rights movement was about the overthrow of an entrenched political order in each of the Southern states, that the segregationists who controlled this order did not hesitate to employ violence (law enforcement, paramilitary, mob) to preserve it, and that for nearly a century the federal government tacitly or overtly supported the segregationist state governments. That the Civil Rights movement employed nonviolent tactics should fool us no more than it did the segregationists, who correctly saw themselves as being at war. Significant change was never going to occur within the political system: it had to be forced. The aim of the segregationists was to keep the federal government on the sidelines. The aim of the Civil Rights movement was to "capture" the federal government -- to get it to apply its weight against the Southern states. As to why it matters: a major reason we were slow to grasp the emergence and extent of the insurgency in Iraq is that it didn't -- and doesn't -- look like a classic insurgency. In fact, the official Department of Defense definition of insurgency still reflects a Vietnam era understanding of the term. Looking at the Civil Rights movement as an insurgency is useful because it assists in thinking more comprehensively about the phenomenon of insurgency and assists in a more complete -- and therefore more useful -- definition of the term."
From Schneier on Security A blog covering security and security technology. * * * * *
I found it fascinating to back through some of the the Sovereignty Commission files, in light of what this writer says regarding insurgency and the civil rights movement.
At 4am on December 4th, 1969, the FBI, working with the Chicago police department, assassinated Chicago Black Panther Party Deputy Chairman Fred Hampton in his bed as he slept. Along with the murder of Mark Clark in the same apartment that night, the "raid" was one in a long line of illegal actions taken by the FBI as part of its COINTELPRO war against the social justice and anti-war movements.
Hampton's death was chronicled in the 1971 documentary film The Murder of Fred Hampton, as well as an episode the documentary series Eyes on the Prize.
Hampton was known as a skilled leader, and the FBI kept close tabs on his activities; FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover was determined to prevent the formation of a cohesive Black radical movement in the United States. Hoover viewed the Panthers, and other such radical coalitions, as a move toward the creation of a revolutionary body that could potentially overthrow the U.S. government.
The FBI opened a file on Hampton in 1967 that over the next two years expanded to twelve volumes and over four thousand pages. A wire tap was placed on Hampton's mother's phone in February 1968. By May of that year, Hampton's name was placed on the "Agitator Index" and he would be designated a "key militant leader for Bureau reporting purposes.
Not surprisingly, Mississippi Sovereignty Commission was keeping tabs on Hampton, too. Here are several links to get started ...
A letter dated Jan. 20, 1970 from the Committee to Defend the Panther 21. Ralph Abernathy’s name is at the top of the list of sponsors and has been circled.
A speech by Carl Braden at the University of Mississippi. "Don't end up ... and get murdered like Fred Hampton." Notes the RNA came to Mississippi for reasons of peace and media has misrepresented its efforts. Report is unsigned but stamped by the University Police.
(Photo: Legendary Organizer Fannie Lou Hamer by Charmain Reading)
Fannie Lou Hamer, a Mississippi Delta civil rights leader, was frequently the target of social injustice. The town where she was once beaten, Winona, is currently the target of a murder investigation by the Friends of Justice.
Friends of Justice launches narrative-based campaigns around unfolding cases where due process has broken down, and empower affected communities to hold public officials accountable for equal justice.
Recently, representatives moved into Winona, Miss. to work on a murder case, asserting that the state’s theory of the murder crime accused of a Winona company's former worker, Curtis Flowers, "... doesn’t fit the actual evidence, and the state manufactured phoney evidence by manipulating, badgering and bribing witnesses."
Details of the Curtis Flowers case are shared at the FOJ website in a story titled, "A brief primer in wrongful conviction: the case of Curtis Flowers."
-----
It wouldn't be the first time the this small town has been accused of participating in social injustices ...
WINONA IS A CITY in Montgomery County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 5,482 at the 2000 census. The name of the city comes from a Sioux word meaning "first-born daughter." It is the county seat of Montgomery County[2]. Winona is known in the local area as "The Crossroads of North Mississippi" due to its central location at the intersection of U.S. Interstate 55 and U.S. Highways 51 and 82.
It is also known in the civil rights arena as the small town where Fannie Lou Hamer (1917-1977) was jailed and beaten, after attending a voting rights conference.
The Voter Registration informational meeting had been organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Hamer, a Delta sharecropper, heard from SNCC something she'd never heard before: black people had the right to vote.
Becoming a field organizer for SNCC, Hamer was returning home from a voter training workshop in June 1963, when she and two others were taken to jail in Winona, Mississippi, and mercilessly beaten. Hamer suffered permanent damage to her kidneys. After recovering from her injuries, she traveled across the U.S. telling her story and raising more money for SNCC than any other member.
Mrs. Hamer's telling account before the Credentials Committee of the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey on August 22, 1964 -- of what happened when she was arrested and beaten -- stunned a nation when the speech was heard on national televsion.
(Photo, The Freedom Archives)
Fannie Lou Hamer, civil rights leader, was beaten in Winona, Miss.
Hamer was attending the convention with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), formed to expand black voter registration and challenge the legitimacy of the state's all-white Democratic Party.
MFDP members arrived at the 1964 Democratic National Convention intent on unseating the official Mississippi delegation or at least getting seated with them. On August 22, 1964, Hamer appeared before the convention's credentials committee and told her story about trying to register to vote in Mississippi.
Threatened by the MFDP's presence at the convention, President Lyndon Johnson quickly preempted Hamer's televised testimony with an impromptu press conference. But later that night, Hamer had fascinating so many people around the country with her partly-told story, that it was broadcast in its entirety on all the major networks.
After speaking to the Credentials Committee, acompromise was reached that gave voting and speaking rights to two delegates from the MFDP and seated the others as honored guests. The Democrats agreed that in the future no delegation would be seated from a state where anyone was illegally denied the vote. A year later, President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act.
After years of working to make a change for people of color, Mrs. Hamer -- born October 6, 1917, in Montgomery County, Mississippi, she was the granddaughter of a slave and the youngest of 20 children -- died penniless in Ruleville, Miss. where friends paid for the funeral. * * * * *
Hamer was a frequent target of the Sovereignty Commission. Here are several of the hundreds of files still available today in the state's digital archives, where her name is listed in the following versions:
HAMER, FANIE LOU In this file, Mrs. Hamer's campaign fundraising is tied to the Communist Party of the U.S.A.
HAMER, FANNIE LOU Here, the Sovereignty Commission sends spies to a federal courthouse hearing in Oxford, where Mrs. Hamer filed an injunction against city officials to prevent an election of taking place.
HAMER, FANNIE LOUS Mrs. Hamer leads a boycott against schools and white businesses. AP story.
HAMER, FANNY LOU Mrs. Hamer tops a list of "five people colored people Mississippians vow they will kill in the register-to-vote battle."
HAMER, MRS. A friend, Jane Stembridge, writes a poem and letter of support for Mrs. Hamer.
This is only a small sample of the many files you will find on Mrs. Hamer by doing a search at the MDAH Digital Collections of the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission. Remember, these files are not indexed digitally. Names are spelled in many versions and often records are not fully indexed.
BY THE END of the 1960s and into the early 1970s, well over a dozen years after Brown v. the Board of Education followed by the murders of Rev. George Lee, Lamar Smith and then Emmett Till, violence was accelerating in Mississippi. More black people were being killed or turning up “missing” than had been in recent years.
Attempts to destroy organizations trying to stop the violence increased, too. Black Panthers, just coming into the Delta, and small volunteer groups, sometimes church run, were trying to help Mississippi’s blacks either change their conditions or flee the state.
Both the Panthers and the Box Project, the later aiding sharecroppers to physically escape plantations, were perceived much like ACORN in 2009 – their efforts at community organization and related activities often misunderstood or misrepresented.
Fear of northern events such as Watts’s burning in 1965 translated to attempts at halting the Panthers, who in 1969 were quietly trying to organize college students at Delta State University in Cleveland, 17miles southwest of Drew.
Isaac Henderson Shorter of Cleveland returned home from Detroit where he had led demonstrations, hoping to galvanize Delta State students through the Black Panther organization. The Sovereignty Commission was right on it – spying on Shorter, a Delta State student, and others who had “returned from Berkeley with a stack of Black Panther newspapers.”
For an agency two years away from winding down, the returning organizers brought new life to the Commission’s investigations; current archives show 25 files on Shorter, alone.
Here a some links to several of Shorter's files. Of course, you will find more records by visiting the digital archives hidden away at
The Tallahatchie County Courthouse, site of the trial of Emmett Till's killers, seen from across the Cassidy Bayou. Photo by Susan Klopfer
U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson has officially requested that the U.S. attorney general to investigate an incident in which residents of Sumner conducted a search for a burglary suspect.
The suspect, William Pittman, was charged Aug. 20 with breaking and entering a home in Sumner. He was released on bond the same day.
There's no indication Pittman was injured.
The FBI has also said it’s looking into the incident.
"I have asked U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate the vigilante type activities that occurred in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi, last Thursday," Thompson announced today in a news release.
“Unauthorized people with guns, terrorizing citizens of this area has no place in civilized society.
“The fact that this community still (bears) the stains of racial tensions and is the area that Emmett Till was murdered weighs heavy on the conscience and fears of this community.” + + +
Well, well. What an interesting time for this to take place -- in the week coming up on the anniversary of young Till's kidnapping and lynching. It hasn't been that long ago, and it's certainly fascinating to search out some names (not yet mentioned as involved by news organizations) in the Sovereignty Commission files. Here's a few Who's Who searches to get started ...
By the way, here's the latest url for the archives digital collections, http://mdah.state.ms.us/arrec/digital_archives/
If any of this sticks, here are several names that might pop out (relatives of a possible main player)
No funeral was allowed for Neda, the young woman shot by Iran's security forces. At the cemetery, security forces used tear gas to clear the area of demonstrators and mourners, according to CNN reports. A witness said riot police and Basij militia were at the scene, but the confrontations with people in the crowd involved Iran's militia.
In this Youtube Video, Neda's financee tells the harrowing story of the woman's death. She was hot and tired and got out of the car to get some rest. She was not in an areas where theyre had been any clashes, he says.
She was killed by the forces of Basij and the killer was seen by witnesses. "If that person was a police member, according to the laws of our country, he would have been wearing a uniform, and he was not."
No funeral was allowed because the government knew who shot her, her finance continues. "This is why they would not allow any funeral or services for her."
This week, I've begun blogging the stories of Emmett Till and five other Mississippi civil rights martyrs. The blog book is free and available at http://emmett-till.org and http://whokilledemmetttill.com so please come by, read and comment.
Included are accounts of Cleve McDowell, Jo Etha Collier, Adlena Hamlett, Birdia Keglar and Joe Pullen. All have sovereignty commission files.
You are invited to leave your comments at the Till book blog to become part of the blog book.
It is sad and fascinating that two young people, Emmett Till and, years later, Jo Etha Collier were killed in the civil rights movement; both events becoming key to the movement. Like Neda, their names will be remembered.
Casket holding the deceased mother of James Chaney, one of three civil rights workers murdered in Meridian, Mississippi in the summer of 1964. The FBI file's name for the case is MBURN. (photo, Susan Klopfer)
Harry J. Wiggs,73, of Philadelphia,Mississippi died Thursday, July 23, 2009, at Neshoba County General Hospital. He was born and reared in Decatur, and had made his home in Philadelphia since 1963. He retired from the Mississippi Highway Patrol in 1990.
Wiggs was one of the two Mississippi Highway Patrol officers reported by some sources as having been involved in the conspiracy to murder civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerne, The Meridian Star reported.
"These sources have concluded that although the two highway patrol officers abandoned the plot shortly before the murders, they did nothing to stop them," the Star's reporter stated.
Linda Royster Beito will appear for an author book signing and talk on the life of Mound Bayou's Dr. T.R.M. Howard: Mentor of Medgar Ever and Fannie Lou Hamer. David Beito is the book's co-author.
Time and Location: Friday, July 10, 6:00 p.m., Kemetic Institute, Mound Bayou, Historic Hwy 61, Across from the John F. Kennedy Memorial High School. For more information, call 205-292-2902.
Mississippi Senator Belongs to Uptown Klan (White Citizens Councils, Now Called Council of Conservative Citizens -- Same Folks, Same Message)
Last weekend, Sen. Lydia Chassaniol (R-Winona) was the keynote speaker at the annual convention of the Council of Conservative Citizens, an organization that has been classified as a white separatist hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and described as having “a thinly-veiled white supremacist agenda” by The New York Times. On the CCC web site, you can buy a “white pride” T-shirt; their platform praises America’s “European” heritage and condemns “mixture of the races”; a previous incarnation of their web site described African Americans as “a retrograde species of humanity”; and so forth. The organization’s agenda is fairly transparent.
Sen. Chassaniol has refused to disavow the organization, praising it as a group of “lone wolves crying in the wilderness” during her keynote and stating that its presence “gives [her] hope.” When she was later asked about her membership in the group, she replied that “a person’s membership in any organization is a private matter.”
Daughters of the late civil rights attorney, William Kunstler, Emily Kunstler and Sarah Kunstler, have recently completed a documentary about their father entitled William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe which will have its world premiere screening as part of the Documentary Competition of the upcoming 2009 Sundance Film Festival in January.
Mississippi's Sovereignty Commission had great interest in Kunstler, who fought for civil righs with Dr. King., and judging by the hundreds of files still available to peruse, the civil rights lawyer loved stirring it up Mississippi. Here are several:
Mississippi was one of the most potentially deadly spots for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to appear during the civil rights years, yet he often did so – and not without tremendous personal risk.
Tougaloo College sociology professor, Hunter Bear, (Hunter Gray/Dr. John R Salter, Jr.) left his teaching job, was accused of being a Communist, and almost his life in the mid 1960s for his civil rights activities; he confirms the pressure put on King whenver he came into Mississippi.
Hunter Bear remembers telephoning King and asking him to come to Jackson in June of 1963 shortly after Medgar Evers was killed in front of his home. The state’s well-known NAACP leader’s wife and children were waiting for him to leave his car and come inside the house, after a late night planning meeting at his church.
---------- Some MLK links in Sovereignty Commission files
“The rapidly growing protest demonstrations were being bloodily suppressed and I asked him to come to Jackson for Medgar's funeral on June 15. He readily agreed to do so. We picked him up and several key staff of his – Ralph Abernathy, Wyatt Walker and others – at the police-drenched Jackson airport.
“It was already very hot and the temperature was to go, that day, to 102 super-humid degrees. Martin King and Dr Abernathy rode in my car – along with Bill Kunstler – and the others were brought by Ed King (a Mississippi civil rights activist and Tougaloo chaplain, not related to Martin Luther King).
The retired sociologist remembers King’s calmness in the face of “..a very grudging police escort from the city's all-White police department. The Jackson setting could not have been more lethally dangerous for all of us – but Dr. King visited easily and casually with me, and I with him, as we traveled the very dangerous several miles to the Negro Masonic Temple on Lynch Street.” ------------ Salter"s", Evers and Threats
Evers’ funeral was huge – “several thousand people, inside and out” – and afterwards, “…six thousand of us marched the two miles or so from the Temple to the Collins Funeral Home on Farish Street. It was the first "legal" civil rights demonstration in Mississippi's hate-filled, sanguinary history.”
King came into Mississippi early on and was there during some of the state's most critical times. In 1966, a state chapter of the Deacons of Defense, a black group concerned with protection of the lives of African Americans, worried for King’s safety and provided him with armed security during events in Jackson and McComb, and for the James Meredith March held that summer.
It was a good call by the Deacons, since Meredith was shot June 6 near Hernando, a day before the primary election, while walking from Memphis to Jackson to encourage black people to register and vote.
Meredith, four years earlier the first black student to enroll and attend the University of Mississippi, undertook his 220-mile March Against Fear to challenge white supremacy and inspire black Mississippians to vote. This was an unusual move for Meredith, who was home from his first year at Columbia University’s law school; he rarely involved himself publicly in civil rights demonstrations.
After Meredith was wounded, and taken to a Memphis hospital, King and other civil rights leaders continued the protest. The march moved on southward through the Delta to Belzoni, where Rev. George Lee had been violently killed by a shotgun blast to his face eleven years earlier, and on through several other small cotton towns.
Then King split off and left for Philadelphia to hold a service on the anniversary of the murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner; King and others were attacked with clubs while police and Justice Department observers and FBI agents looked on, reported civil rights marchers who were also beaten. ----------- Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner
Meanwhile in Canton, a small town north of Jackson, officials refused to allow marchers to pitch tents on the town's black school ground. The crowd numbered about 3,500 people and was faced off by sixty-one state troopers lined up in full battle gear, carrying a mass of weapons. The troopers fired tear gas into the crowd and then waded in with guns and nightsticks.
One journalist on the scene observed, "They came stomping in behind the gas, gun-butting and kicking the men, women, and children."
"This is the very state patrol that President Johnson said today would protect us. Anyone who will use gas bombs on women and children can't and won't protect anybody," Rev. King told reporters.
The riot in Canton would equal in violence and bloodshed the assault on Selma, Alabama marchers one year earlier. After Selma President Lyndon Johnson had federalized the National Guard to protect the demonstrators marching to Montgomery, but his administration's response to Canton was different. Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach explained to reporters he “regretted” the use of tear gas against the marchers, for “it always makes the situation more difficult.”
But Katzenbach refused to condemn the police action and asserted the whole matter was under investigation.
Meredith’s March ended quietly as Dr. King rejoined marchers and led a group to Tougaloo College, where 9,000 supporters attended a mass rally. On Sunday, June 26, the march came to close at the capital grounds in Jackson as nearly 15,000 people drew together to hear the civil rights leader declare the march and rally to go down in history "as the greatest demonstration for freedom ever held in the state of Mississippi."
Just four days after the Meredith incident, Klansmen had tried to lure King back into Mississippi by kidnapping and murdering a black farmer. Members of an Adams CountyWhite Knights cell known as the Cottonmouth Moccasin gang murdered Ben Chester White, described by Mississippi journalist Jerry Mitchell as "a quiet man with a shiny gold tooth, a humble man who could hardly read but could still quote long passages from the Bible."
White was neither a civil rights worker nor was he registered to vote.
Believing they could lure Rev. King to Natchez, the cell members on June 10 shot White who had worked most of his life as a caretaker on a Natchez plantation and had no involvement in civil rights work. (FBI agents arrested Ernest Fuller, Ernest Avants and James Jones four days later. FBI documents indicated that O'Dell Adams, the Adams Sheriff who led the local investigation of the White murder, was also a Klansmen.)
Mississippi could not let go of its hate and harassment of the civil rights leader. And its unique State Sovereignty Commission, opened in 1956 in reaction to federal enforcement of the US Supreme Court ruling on integrating schools, Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and the murder of Emmett Till (1955), often used former FBI agents to spy on and harass Dr. King.
After the Sovereignty Commission was shut down, state lawmakers ordered the files sealed until 2027 (50 years later). In 1989, a federal judge ordered the records opened, with some exceptions for still-living people but legal challenges delayed the records' availability to the public until March 1998.
Still more records were released in 2002. It would turn out that over twenty years the agency amassed files on 87,000 people making it the largest state-level spying effort in the nation's history, though some other states had lesser efforts of the same sort.
Hundreds of files on King alone confirm the state’s dedication to spying on and harassing him. Perhaps the most damaging Sovereignty Commission files will never see the light of day; records that were either destroyed, hidden, moved to other state offices or simply never released. But here is one small example of Sovereignty Commission confirming the early-on targeting of King:
Back on September 18, 1959, former FBI agent Zack J. Van Landingham, a Sovereignty Commission investigator, officially reported that A. J. Simmons, a white Citizens Councils administrator, had contacted him about an upcoming Southern Christian Ministers Conference of Mississippi that included Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. along with other speakers from around the country.
Simmons wanted "these speakers coming here from out of the state ... harassed as much as possible” and specifically wanted Dr. King "arrested by the police, taken down, fingerprinted and photographed ... [and] had already conferred with Chief of Detectives Pierce about such procedures."
Van Landingham reported he spoke with Sam Ivy, director of the Bureau of Identification and that "Arrangements were made whereby we could use the recording instrument of the Mississippi Highway Patrol.... I will take some steps to see what pressure can be brought to bear on any of [the speakers] and possibly get the meeting cancelled."
Mississippi government was not alone in their targeting of King who also was a major focus of the FBI’s COINTELPRO secret operation that also targeted the Mississippi Freedom Democrats, a group led by activists Fannie Lou Hamer and Aaron Henry that ultimately questioned the seating of Mississippi’s all-white delegation to the Democratic National Convention in 1964.
Ironically, most of the Sovereignty Commission’s agents had ties to the FBI as well as other intelligence agencies, and as records show, maintained those relationships when going to work for Mississippi. Clearly they were in good position to help out the federal government in its continued, vicious attack on Rev. Martin Luther King.
***** MLK "I Have a Dream"
*****
Emily Kunstler and Sarah Kunstler have recently completed a documentary about their father entitled William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe which will have its world premiere screening as part of the Documentary Competition of the upcoming 2009 Sundance Film Festival in January.
The Sovereignty Commission had great interest in Kunstler, who fought for civil righs with Dr. King., hundreds of files are still available to peruse. Here are several:
