by Rick Bowers
In fact, there is evidence that the bad old days are poised for a comeback. For the past two decades, public schools have been gradually resegregating as federal and state courts back off enforcement of integration laws and legislatures sidestep the issue. New white-is-right pressure groups, having resurrected the concepts of the long-defunct White Citizens’ Council, target a new generation of potential race warriors on the Internet. Most details and nuances of the civil rights movement are still unknown to adults and young people today—not only in Mississippi but across the nation.
My advice is that everyone read the Commission files, with their chilling investigative reports on private citizens and their underhanded tactics for maintaining the racist status quo. In the end, the files are an important reminder of the dangers of unchecked power and the reckless disregard for individual rights. And while those files reflect the excesses of the powerful, they also reveal the strength of the people who refused to play the role of the powerless. As the investigative reports show, many of the true civil rights heroes were ordinary folks who hailed from the small towns and clapboard shacks of the Magnolia State, who carried on their struggle to bring down segregation and discrimination with the constant shadow of the state looming over them. Their names—categorized in the files as race agitators, subversives, and communists—live on as champions of the most powerful democratic movement in our history.
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT
The Commission files: The end of the Commission started a heated debate over the fate of the six locked file cabinets of secret papers that had been removed from the office and stored in an underground vault. Resisting calls from lawmakers to destroy the files altogether, the legislature voted to keep the documents sealed for another 50 years, until July 1, 2027. The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit demanding the documents be opened to the public without delay. The courts finally ordered the files to be made public, and their release in 1998 revealed the extent of the secret enterprise.
The FBI: Director J. Edgar Hoover carried out his orders to defuse Klan violence in Mississippi but proved no friend to the civil rights movement. By the mid-1960s Hoover was pressing ahead with COINTELPRO—a massive federal spying operation targeting civil rights advocates, anti-war groups, and alleged communists. The bureau’s use of electronic eavesdropping, masterful sabotage, and extensive infiltration took the art of domestic spying to a dangerous new level.
Agent X: The Day Detective Agency operated a string of black agents for the Commission. The reports were filed under the code name Informant X to protect the identity of the operatives. A comprehensive review of the Commission’s files indicates that a primary operative infiltrated the organizations that were planning Mississippi Freedom Summer in 1964 and provided a steady stream of intelligence to the Commission. The information was passed on to law enforcement and fell into the hands of the Ku Klux Klan.
Following the release of the Commission papers, civil rights activists were particularly interested in answering this question: Who was the Agent X who compromised Mississippi Freedom Summer? A number of activists pointed to R. L. Bolden, who had attended infiltrated meetings, worked on compromised campaigns, and been at the scene of the Freedom Summer training seminars in Ohio. In an interview for this book, Bolden conceded that he worked with the Day Agency and admitted that he provided his bosses with details of civil rights meetings. He insisted the information he passed along was public and claimed there were no secrets in the wide-open civil rights movement. Acknowledging that the Day Agency may have passed his information on to the Commission, he added, “I was not the only one.”
Erle Johnston: After retiring from the Commission, Johnston returned to his hometown, edited his weekly newspaper, and authored a number of books, including a reminiscence about segregationist governor Ross Barnett titled I Rolled with Ross. Through the years, Johnston seemed conflicted between the romance of operating near the height of state power and the shame of doing the bidding of the white power structure. Following the release of the commission files, Johnston came under criticism for the agency’s excesses, and his claims of being a “practical segregationist” and “troubleshooter” failed to dissuade his detractors. He sat on a board dedicated to the preservation of historic papers for Tougaloo College, which he once spied on. He died in 1995.
J. P. Coleman: After leaving the governor’s office, Coleman went on to a distinguished career in government. Driven by a passion for public service, he ran for and won a seat in the state legislature in 1960 and was appointed a federal judge in 1965. He served on the federal court for 16 years. His legacy would always be compromised by the stroke of his pen that created the Sovereignty Commission. He died in 1991.
Aaron Henry: Persevering in his fight for integration and voting rights, Henry served as a community organizer, coalition builder, and respected leader. He was elected to the Mississippi State Legislature in 1982 and served until 1996. He died in 1997.
Clyde Kennard: After he succumbed to cancer in 1963, Kennard’s attempt to integrate Mississippi Southern College was reduced to a footnote in civil rights history. But then students at Lincolnshire High School in Illinois, along with the Center for Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University, persuaded Kennard’s accuser to recant the testimony that had led to Kennard’s conviction as an accomplice to the theft of five bags of chicken feed. In 2006 a judge in the same courtroom where Kennard had been found guilty back in 1960 vacated his conviction. In addition, a building has been named in his honor at the University of Southern Mississippi, formerly Mississippi Southern College.
Ross Barnett: After leaving the governor’s office in 1964, Barnett suffered a decline in popularity as word of his secret dealings with the Kennedys spread. He failed in a second bid for the governor’s office and faded from public view. He was reduced to speaking at white supremacist gatherings and playing accordion and telling stories at county fairs. He died in 1987.
James Meredith: After graduating from Ole Miss, Meredith was shot while leading a March Against Fear from Memphis to Jackson in 1966. Dr. Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders continued the march for him, and Meredith recovered from his wounds and rejoined the trek. Years later, in a dramatic shift, Meredith became a stockbroker, a member of the Republican Party, and a staff member of archconservative Senator Jesse Helms. He claimed that liberal Democrats were the greatest enemies of African Americans. He also wrote an 11-volume history of Mississippi. In 1997 he donated his personal papers to Ole Miss.
Byron De La Beckwith: After walking away free from two trials in the shooting death of Medgar Evers, “Delay Beckwith” went on to play a leadership role in white supremacist groups. In 1994, De La Beckwith was retried for the murder of Medgar Evers amid revelations that the Commission had intervened for the defense during the second trial. This time a jury of eight blacks and four whites found him guilty, and a judge sentenced him to life at Parchman Farm. He died in prison in 2001.
Percy Greene: Scorned as a sellout by many in the black community, Greene finally sold his newspaper and retired. As activist Fred Clark recalled, “They were paying him for those articles that he would write about black people…. He was wearing fine suits, smoking the best cigars, but deep down inside people around him didn’t like him because of how he was getting his money, off the blood of the black people. But he had suffered himself and just didn’t see no light or no hope at the end of the tunnel.”
SELECTED DOCUMENTS FROM THE ARCHIVES OF THE MISSISSIPPI STATE SOVEREIGNTY COMMISSION
Pamphlet
Checks to informants
Suspect list
Agent report
Propaganda
Maps of grave site of civil rights workers
Pamphlet opposing civil rights reform in Washington
Commission checks to compensate black collaborators for services rendered
Extensive lists of license plate numbers of suspected NAACP members
Memo alerting the Commission of
an integrated chiropractor class
Pamphlet designed to show how the state provided quality segregated schools for black children
Hand-drawn map supplied by Commission agent Andy Hopkins depicting the site where FBI agents discovered the bodies of three civil rights workers. The sketch indicates that the bodies were discovered 14 feet deep in an earthen dam.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Many of the sources for this book include specific investigative reports from the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission (MSSC). Specific citations are listed below. Maintained by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH), many of the reports can be accessed online at http://mdah.state.ms.us/.
“Aaron Henry Case Reflects Mississippi Racial Conflict,” Daily Corinthian (Corinth, MS), October 8, 1964.
“Appeal Lost by Kennard,” Jackson Democrat. October 9, 1961. SCR ID# 10-28-0-15-1-1-1. MDAH. Digital Archives.
Agent X Reports: February 23, 1964, SCR ID # 9-31-1-9-1-1-1; March 24, 1964, SCR ID # 9-31-1-27-1-1-1; May 14, SCR ID # 9-31-1-29-1-1-1; 1964, June 9, 1964, SCR ID # 9-31-1-70-1-1-1; June 16, 1964, SCR ID # 9-31-1-74-1-1-1; June 16, 17, 18, 1964, SCR ID # 9-31-1-73-1-1-1. MDAH. Digital Archives.
Barnett, Ross. Inaugural Address, Journal of Mississippi House of Representatives, 1960, regular session. MDAH.
Barnett, Ross. Television address to State of Mississippi, Sept 13, 1962. American Radio Works: http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/prestapes/barnettspeech.html.
Bolden, R. L. Personal interview, Jackson, MS, March 2009. Conducted by Rick Bowers.
“Box Score of Freedom Riders Arrests and Convictions.” Jackson Daily News. July 7, 1961.
Brady, Thomas Pickens. Black Monday. 2nd ed. Winona, WI: Association of Citizens’ Councils of Mississippi, 1955.
“Judge Tosses Out 1960 Conviction: Students Work to Clear Man’s Name,” Chicago Tribune. May 18, 2006.
Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Public Law 88-352). Passed July 2, 1964.
Civil Rights in Mississippi, University of Southern Mississippi Digital Archive. McCain Library and Archives. http://www.lib.usm.edu/legacy/spcol/crda/.
Clark, Fred. Oral history interview June 10, 1994. University of Southern Mississippi, USM Digital Archive. http://www.lib.usm.edu/legacy/spcol/crda/oh/index.html.
“Clyde Kennard Dies in Chicago Hospital,” Jackson Daily News. July 5, 1963.
Cobb, James C. The Most Southern Place on Earth – The Mississippi Delta and the Roots of Regional Identity. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Coleman, Gov. J. P. James P. Coleman Papers, Journal of the House of Representatives, 1956, regular session. MDAH.
Crespino, Joseph. In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007.
DeCell, Hal. MSSC. 6 January 1958. SCR ID # 9-0-0-40-1-1-1, SCR ID# 1-16-1-1-1-1-1 to 1-16-1-18-1-1-1. MDAH Digital Archives.
Delaughter, Bobby. Never Too Late: A Prosecutor’s Story of Justice in the Medgar Evers Case. New York: Scribner, 2001.
Dittmer, John. Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1994.
Downing, Virgil. MSSC Investigator. February 14, 1961, SCR ID# 1-67-1-2-1-1-1; February 26, 1964, SCR ID# 2-112-1-36-1-1-1. MDAH. Digital Archives.
“Elections: Mississippi Mud,” Time, September 7, 1959. http://www.jfklibrary.org/meredith/index.htm.
Ely, James W. Jr. and Bradley G. Bond, eds. “Profiles of Ross Barnett and Theodore Bilbo,” Law & Politics (2008). Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina.
Evers, Myrlie and Marable Manning. The Autobiography of Medgar Evers: A Hero’s Life and Legacy Revealed Through His Writings, Letters, and Speeches. New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2005.
—with William Peters. For Us, The Living, the Widow of Civil Rights Leader Medgar Evers Tells the Story of Their Life Together in Mississippi and of His Tragic Assassination. New York: Doubleday, 1967.
“Featured Project,” Bluhm Legal Clinic: News and Notes, p. 4. Northwestern University School of Law, Fall 2006. http://www.law.northwestern.edu/legalclinic/news/newlttrarchive/Fall06.pdf.
Finley, Melissa. But I Was a Practical Segregationist: Erle Johnston and the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, Master’s Thesis. University of Southern Mississippi, 2000.
Frankhauser, David. Freedom Rides: Recollections of David Frankhauser. Online at http://biology.clc.uc.edu/Frankhauser/index.htm.
General Laws of the State of Mississippi, Chapter 365, 520–524 (1956).
Henry, Aaron and Constance Curry. Aaron Henry: The Fire Ever Burning. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000.
“High Court Rejects Appeal by Kennard,” Clarion Ledger. October 10, 1961, SCR ID# 10-28-0-15-1-1-1. MDAH. Digital Archives.
Hopkins, A. L., December 4, 1958, SCR# 3-74-1-17-3-1-1; February 9, 1961, SCR ID# 2-55-1-77-1-1-1; June 30 1961, SCR ID # 2-55-3-29-1-1-1; April 9, 1964, SCR# 1-77-0-19-1-1-1; June 29, 1964, SCR ID # 2-112-1-41-1-1-1, # 2-112-1-44-1-1-1; August 13, 1964, SCR # 2-112-1-19-1-1-1; August 25, 1964, SCR # 2-112-1-42-1-1-1, April 8, 1965, SCR# 6-36-0-51-2-1-1, SCR ID # 2-112-1-51-1-1-1, SCR ID # 2-112-1-50-1-1-1. MDAH. Digital Archives.
Humes, Henry Harrison, SCR ID # 1-0-0-18-1-1-1- to 99-95-0-13-1-1-1; SCR ID# 97-104-0-75-1-1-1; SCR ID# 97-104-0-77-3-1-1. MDAH. Digital Archive Johnston, Erle. Interviews conducted July 30, 1980, and August 13, 1993. Civil Rights in Mississippi Digital Archive. University of Southern Mississippi. http://www.lib.usm.edu/~spcol/crda/oh/index.html.
—A Report of the First 18 Months of the Public Relations Program, 1962, SCR ID# 99-139-0-1-1-1-1; February 8, 1965, SCR ID # 99-62-0-33-1-1-1. MDAH. Digital Archives.
—I Rolled with Ross. Forest, MS: Lake Harbor Publishers, 1980.
Katagiri, Yasuhiro. The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission: Civil Rights and States Rights. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001.
Kennard, Clyde. Editorial. Hattiesburg American (Hattiesburg, MS), December 6, 1958.
Kennedy, Randall. Sellout: The Politics of Racial Betrayal. New York: Vintage Books, 2009.
Levitas, Daniel. The Terrorist Next Door: The Militia Movement and the Radical Right. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002.
Maass, Peter. “The Secrets of Mississippi, Post Authoritarian Shock in the South.” The New Republic. December 21, 1998.
Mars, Florence and Lynn Eden. Witness in Philadelphia. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977.
The Message from Mississippi (film). MSSC. July 1960. MDAH. Digital Archives.
Mississippi is Educating…Without Integrating (pamphlet). MSSC. MDAH. Resource Room File.
“Moderation Stand Gives Negro Leaders Humes, Green Hot Time,” Delta Democrat Times (Greenville, MS), July 28, 1957.
MSSC. Sovereignty Commission records on formation of investigative function, SCR ID # 7-0-1-56-1-1-1 to SCR ID# 7-0-1-56-12-1-1; June 12, 1957, SCR# 10-0-1-108-1-1, SCR # 7-3-0-1-6-1-1; July 13, 1959, SCR ID# 7-0-1-56-1-1-1 to 7-0-1-56-12-1-1; July 6, 1961, SCR ID # 2-140-3-37-1-1-1; October 31, 1962, SCR # ID 97-11-0-222-1-1-1; MDAH. Digital Archives.
NAACP. “About the NAACP: History.” http://www.naacp.org/about/history/index.htm.
—New Member Card, #SCR ID 9-31-2-5-6-1-1. MDAH. Digital Archives.
“Negro Claims He Wants to Enroll at Mississippi Southern College,” Meridian Star, Meridian, MS, Dec. 11, 1958.
“Negroes to Pursue Vote,” Daily Times Leader, West Point, MS, November 17, 1958.
“No Cadillacking About—Negro Editor Challenges King to Make Himself a Martyr,” Jackson Daily News, July 6, 1961.
“No God—Non-Christian Freedom Riders Learn Trade in Red School,” Jackson Clarion Ledger, June 30, 1961.
Nossiter, Adam. Of Long Memory: Mississippi and the Murder of Medgar Evers. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1995.
Operator #79. March 15, 1964. SCR ID # 9-31-1-22-1-1-1. MDAH. Digital Archives.
Orr-Klopfer, M. Susan, Fred Klop
fer, and Berry Klopfer. Where Rebels Roost: Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited. M. Susan Orr-Klopfer: 2005.
Percy, William Alexander, Lanterns on the Levee: Recollections of a Planter’s Son, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1941.
“Riders Ties to Commies,” Jackson Clarion Ledger. July 2, 1961.
“Rifle Fingerprint Called Beckwith’s,” Jackson Daily News. Feb. 3, 1964.
Peterson, Jason A., “Forgotten and Ignored: Mississippi Newspaper Coverage of Clyde Kennard and His Effort to Integrate Mississippi Southern College.” Paper presented to the Association for Education in Journalism. August 2006.
Rosenberg, Gerald N. The Hollow Hope: Can Courts Bring Social Change? Urbana, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991.
Scarborough, Tom, Oct 9 1962, SCR ID # 2-19-0-23-1-1-1. MDAH. Digital Archives.
Silver, James W. Mississippi: The Closed Society. London: Gollancz, 1964.