As federal court decisions and federal civil rights legislation swept away the legal underpinnings of racist laws, the strength of the truth showed itself. As racist laws entered their death throes, the racist lie gasped and grasped for artificial life support. In a desperate attempt to give its unconstitutional Jim Crow practices artificial life support, the state of Mississippi had unleashed the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission. To maintain segregation the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission had to create new lies to justify and bolster Jim Crow. Racism itself dehumanized and scandalized a whole people. Sovereignty Commission lies and spies set out to scandalize black leaders, sow dissension in the civil rights cadres, and thus demoralize those whose passionate fight for freedom was itself a veritable living repudiation of the great racist lie.
Like the racism that brought the agency into the world, the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission files are filled with untruth. Some of the untruth in these files is untruth of the type that might be found in the raw files of any police investigatory agency that collects rumors of criminal activity and seeks corroboration. However, the fact that a so-called free society would set in motion criminal-like investigations of advocates of freedom certainly puts the records of the Sovereignty Commission into an unusually immoral and hypocritical category. Moreover, in a free society we test police-generated information in the courts before juries where witnesses can be confronted, cross-examined, and refuted. There was never any such winnowing process in the secret workings which produced the Sovereignty Commission files. Raw police files represent unproven suspicions at best, and libelous destructive rumormongering at worst.
In the case of the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission and similar agencies created to defend segregation and racism in other states, the lies go beyond the collection of unproven rumors or uncorroborated assertions. Sovereignty Commission untruth includes distortions that reflect both the overt racism of investigators and their desire to discredit and defame black leaders in the eyes of their own people and in the eyes of potentially sympathetic white moderates. Other untruth in these files derives from the agency’s efforts to control black leaders. The files are filled with groundless and misleading speculation about stalwart black men and women who, white agents theorized, might be used to counter emerging local civil rights leaders. Most of the time the agents making such reports had no acquaintance or firsthand knowledge of the black notables about whom they wrote. Moreover, these state agents passed on the imaginative theories of white informants about black communities that the whites little understood. Strikingly, because there are so few black informants, the files I have examined pile rumor upon speculation and flavor the product with racist assumptions, all of which combine to compound untruth.
Because they begin with a racist stance and contain so many bald-faced, unmitigated lies and baseless assertions about individuals, I do not trust the Sovereignty Commission files. Especially their racist speculations and interpretations of Negro intentions and character must be taken with a pound of salt. Racists ran that agency intending to protect segregation. Its sole purpose was to block or frustrate movements of the type we were leading in Biloxi. If there was a way to put a negative interpretation on a black person’s motives or to defame a black leader, their agents were likely to try to do so, according to my examination of the Sovereignty Commission files. Where facts were sparse or incomplete, Sovereignty Commission investigators’ negative imaginations were rich.
Nonetheless, when given the opportunity to redact information or delete any reference to my name from these files before they were opened, I declined to withhold anything in the Sovereignty Commission files from public scrutiny. However, this decision should not be taken as an indication of any acceptance of these files as truth. It most emphatically is not. These files are in fact full of gossip and untruth. Still, just as surviving gestapo files show us something important about the Nazi era, the Sovereignty Commission files illustrate a part of the history of racism and the civil rights struggle in this country. Just as no one would argue that raw gestapo files should be taken at face value, no one should be fooled into taking the Sovereignty Commission files at face value. The Sovereignty Commission files show the abuses of state power and the stupid nature of many of the agency’s investigations more than they provide any real understanding of the motives, methods, goals, or internal problems of the civil rights movement in Mississippi. Any lay reader of the files is likely to be amazed at how much time and public money was wasted on ridiculous activities and rumor reporting. God only knows how many hours were wasted typing up gossip. Lay readers will also be astonished at the time agents apparently spent in duplicating and cross-indexing various reports and newspaper clippings in order to file them under multiple headings. There are 250 pages of documents in my Sovereignty Commission file. Many of them are duplicate or triplicate copies of the same materials from different agency file groups.
While the factual content of the files cannot be trusted, these files are an important illustration of the nefarious means which a dying segregationist order used to defend itself. Beyond their illustration of racist perversions, the files show examples of sloppy, unprofessional, and incompetent investigatory work. For example, I am astonished at how little progress the agency actually made in cultivating sources of information in the black community. There are almost no black agents or informers. Most of the information about me came from press clippings or from pure speculation and rumor reported by white police or white public officials on the coast. Little or none of the information gathered on me came directly from black informants. Only Percy Greene, the notorious black editor of the Jackson Advocate who has long been reported to have been in the Sovereignty Commission’s pay, attempted to aid the agency in discrediting me. Now, there could have been things about this agency that the files do not let us know about. It is widely known that Erie Johnston, the agency’s director in the post-Barnett era, destroyed some of the Sovereignty Commission files.4 What concerns were uppermost in his mind when he selected documents to burn are not known, so perhaps at one time there were more than 250 pages of documents related to my activities. It is also noteworthy that my file grows very thin after Governor Barnett left office. Although materials were added as late as 1968, the vast majority of reports and documents on me had been collected by 1963. Most of them have to do with the effort to desegregate the beaches. I had hardly begun to fight when they slowed down their file-making on me. I was surprised to find so little in the files on the desegregation of the schools, an activity in which the Biloxi branch took special pride as a leader in the state.
So, how did this ramshackle racist agency operate? First of all, they made lists. The earliest documents in my file represent an effort to gather the names of all NAACP members in Biloxi in 1959 before we organized the Biloxi branch. Their source for the local list was the Biloxi Police Department, whose chief, Herbert McDonnell, duly reported that Dr. Gilbert Mason and W. B. McDaniel were NAACP members. The chief also reported that we had no branch in Biloxi. Interestingly enough, the same document contains information from Harrison County sheriff J. J. Whitman, who reportedly “was sure there was an active NAACP operating in Gulfport,” but he could not identify the leaders because “they kept their movements and activities secret.” On the other hand, chief of police G. E. Mullins in Gulfport was able to identify Dr. Dunn as president of the Gulfport branch, but could not identify other members of the branch.5 In my file I found a handwritten list of persons connected with civil rights organizations around the state that was apparently compiled by Percy Greene. Sovereignty agents also collected license tag numbers of automobiles seen near civil rights demonstrations or civil rights meetings in order to identify the owners. Their list-making included lists of black pharmacies across the state. I qualified for this list because Natalie and I had organized the Modern Drug Store in 1960.6 Why in the world would they collect a list of black pharmacies and pharmacists? I can only speculate that pha
rmacists represented an economically independent class of black businessmen who might have been thought difficult for the white establishment to control. In many cases, the black-owned pharmacy was itself a nexus in black communities. Aaron Henry’s name is on this list. Aaron’s Fourth Street Drug Store was legendary and served as a one-stop NAACP information and voter registration service center in Clarksdale. My medical office on Division Street in Biloxi played the same role in the Biloxi civil rights struggle.
The papers in my file show that when Sovereignty Commission agents came from their Jackson headquarters to the coast, they typically made rounds to local elected officials, the police, and the sheriff. Mostly, these trips involved routine checks to see if white officials had any news or rumors of civil rights activities in the area. At other times Sovereignty Commission agents came to the coast because local officials requested investigative assistance. The first Sovereignty Commission investigation of me personally was launched in October of 1959, after I presented the petition to desegregate the beach to the Harrison County Board of Supervisors. I found a copy of the petition in my Sovereignty Commission file. The main purpose of the investigation was to develop material that could be used to discredit me as an emerging black leader. The file alleges that this investigation was undertaken at the specific request of state senator Stanford Morse of Gulfport, who was acting as attorney for the board of supervisors. According to agent Zack Van Landingham’s account, Morse’s main interest was in me, because local officials claimed they had already developed allegations to be used to discredit Dr. Dunn.7
To aid the board of supervisors’ attorney’s effort to destroy my credibility, Van Landingham verified my birth records with the State Bureau of Vital Statistics in Jackson and checked papers relating to my medical licensure in the Mississippi Medical Library. Agent Van Landingham checked my educational credentials from high school through college and medical school. He ran a credit check on me and on my father with the Retail Credit Bureau in Jackson and “found nothing derogatory” to report. Locally, the Harrison County Credit Bureau records reflected that “Dr. Mason paid his bills promptly.” They checked both Jackson and coast police books to find that I had no arrest record. (That would soon change.) Van Landingham checked on me with the Selective Service Headquarters in Jackson, and he interviewed Dr. Kirby Walker, Jackson’s superintendent of schools, who reported that I had been a straight-A student at Lanier High with no disciplinary action recorded in the school file. Van Landingham’s only information about my civil rights activities to that point came from law enforcement officials in Biloxi. Similar investigations were run on all four of the signers of the 1959 beach petition.8
On the surface this may look like a competent check, but Van Landingham apparently had no references or informers in the black community in Biloxi from whom he could get information on me. The little information being passed on from the black community came through white local officials or newspaper reporters, and it appears to have been second- or thirdhand by the time Sovereignty agents recorded it. I am sure that Van Landingham was disappointed to find nothing that could be used against me. After receiving this first report, Senator Morse observed to Van Landingham that I seemed to be “a very smart and educated Negro who apparently had been well informed by some attorney with reference to legal rights.”9
Ironically, while the files complement my understanding of the legal basis for demanding our rights on the beach, they contain disparaging innuendos about my local white attorney, Knox Walker, who had done the basic research for me. I must say that my admiration for the courage, competence, and commitment of Knox Walker is high. This white attorney suffered for the cause of civil rights in Harrison County right along with the black leadership. In addition, Knox Walker probably did more pro bono work on charity cases than any other lawyer in the county. He had a good heart. His activities on behalf of civil rights and labor put a strain on his marriage, which I understand ended in a sad divorce. Knox Walker’s law practice suffered because of his willingness to represent the cause of “that agitator Gilbert Mason” in our efforts to desegregate the beach. His colleagues in the legal profession ostracized him. Suffering from a kind of white economic boycott, Knox Walker became economically strangled and financially overextended to the point that lenders cut off his credit. In this bind, to keep his airplane from being repossessed, he sold it to me. I had good credit and could assume the note. Knox then bought the plane back from me, and I would use his payments to me to make my payments to the lenders in Dallas. He needed the plane to tend to his far-flung clients, and I was happy to help him find a way to keep it. He eventually fully redeemed the plane.
A man like Knox Walker with fortitude, courage, and devotion to the principle of equal justice for all did not deserve to be smeared by police agencies, but Sovereignty spies recorded negative aspersions whenever they thought it might be useful. Knox Walker also received some overt threats aimed at discouraging his association with me. He took the shoves and pulls of the white ruffians outside the courthouse right along with me. The Monday night after he first appeared at trial as my defense attorney, the Biloxi police followed Knox Walker from the courthouse down to Highway 90, where they arrested him for “failing to signal a turn and having an improper car tag.”10 Knox Walker, a white southerner, suffered with us for our stand in gaining freedom for our people to use the beach. I remember asking another white Biloxi lawyer why he would not join in the civil rights movement. He laid it all out bluntly. “I want to eat and I want to feed my family,” he said. This reticence in the white legal establishment illustrates the intimidation and fear that segregationist craziness created in the right-thinking portion of the white community. Lawyers like Knox Walker knew that they would have a tough go of it if they took our cases. Local authorities depended on the fears white lawyers harbored about taking civil rights cases as a tool to keep the lid on local civil rights activities. However, fear did not control Knox Walker. He is an unsung local hero of human rights.
The Sovereignty Commission undertook some big, albeit incompetent and unsuccessful, attempts to smear and discredit Dr. Felix Dunn and me. So far as I know, they never used the derogatory rumors about Dr. Dunn which they recorded in the file, but they did lie to Felix Dunn, and they did lie about him and about the role he tried to play in attempting to resolve the beach issue in April of 1960. Dr. Felix Dunn and I never disagreed on anything. We both wanted the schools desegregated unconditionally, and we both wanted the beach desegregated unconditionally. I was loud and adamant. Felix was soft-spoken and firm. In old football running-back parlance, he was Mr. Inside. I was Mr. Outside. We were a team. In the aftermath of the rioting and killing associated with the bloody wade-in of April 1960, Felix Dunn and Knox Walker made a trip to Jackson to try to get state help in resolving the issue of black access to the beach. They marched straight into the devil’s den, the Sovereignty Commission headquarters in Jackson, where they had a long conversation which they did not know was being taped. Ironically, the tape that was probably made in hopes that it could be used against Dr. Dunn now is a good example of the Sovereignty Commission’s strategy of lying and deceit Now, what is of interest here is the difference between what Dr. Dunn said, which was recorded on tape, and what the Sovereignty agents wrote in his file and later released to the press about this meeting. The authorities lied and scandalized Felix Dunn. The agents’ own tape demonstrates their agency lies.
The week of the riot, when this recorded conversation took place, Felix and I had been “through the mill” We had seen what had been planned as a peaceful demonstration turn into a bloody white-led riot which had resulted in eight shootings, two deaths, and dozens of injuries. Felix was with me in the office when we decided to call Roy Wilkins to ask for national NAACP help. During that week, Felix Dunn met with Medgar Evers. I do not recall Felix telling me he was going to Jackson that week. However, we were good citizens and were still ready to negotiate with local authorities, provided that the star
ting point of any negotiation was a recognition of our unquestioned right to use any part of the twenty-six-mile beach that we might wish. Sovereignty Commission tapes show that this was the basic message, secretly taped by state agents, that Felix Dunn took to Jackson on April 28, four days after the riots.
Now, anyone who is well acquainted with Dr. Dunn will know what I mean when I say that when it came to dealing with white officials, he was one of the best “shuck and jive” men around. In this mode Felix tried to persuade these Sovereignty Commission dudes that so-called “integration” shouldn’t even be a concern on a twenty-six-mile beach that was big enough for people to find a place to themselves almost anywhere along its entire extent. The issue, Felix told them, was free access, not “mixing” on the beach. Felix tried to disarm these seg enforcers by saying that not many local folks used the beach anyway, because the water was usually muddy. They tried to twist his words and find some contradiction between his statement that access to the beach did not necessarily mean mixing with white folks and his statement that he favored integration of the public schools. On tape, right there in the devil’s den, Dunn can be heard making a strong case for desegregation of the schools with these agents in his face telling him that any form of integration was against Mississippi law and out of the question. Again and again Felix stated on tape that we had a legal right to use the beach. He jived some by telling them that until recently blacks pretty much used the beach when they wanted to most anywhere but in Biloxi. He told them that we just needed a uniform and predictable policy. The agents would not buy that jive. Felix specifically rejected the idea of a legally segregated beach, and told them a special beach fixed up for blacks on the west pier at Gulfport was absolutely not acceptable.
Beaches, Blood, and Ballots Page 15