A-Infos (en) Mississippi Tried to Rally Southern Neighbors to Share Spy Files

[Tom Burghardt <tburghardt@igc.apc.org>]

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 MISSISSIPPI TRIED TO RALLY SOUTHERN NEIGHBORS TO SHARE SPY FILES
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     JAY HUGHES, Associated Press Writer
     (03-18) 14:24:14
 
     JACKSON, Miss. (AP) -- Even as the tide of civil rights
swelled in the late 1960s, Southern states linked forces to mount
a unified front against integration.
     
     Documents in the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission files
viewed Wednesday shed light on the short-lived Interstate
Sovereignty Commission and the quest its creators envisioned.
     
     According to minutes, the interstate commission was
organized May 4, 1968, at the Monteleone Hotel in New Orleans.
Representatives from the sovereignty commissions of Alabama,
Louisiana and Mississippi were present, as was a politically
connected lawyer from Georgia.
     
     Leesha Faulkner, a historian who has collected Mississippi
Sovereignty Commission records and related documents from various
sources over the years, said Mississippi led efforts to forge an
alliance of fearful segregation watchdogs.
     
     ``My take on it is that schools in Mississippi were
beginning to desegregate in large numbers. I think they were
meeting to talk about school desegregation and what they could do
to subvert that,'' Faulkner said.
     
     From the beginning, records show, Southern sovereignty
commissions cooperated with other states' and federal
investigators, exchanging files on spying victims that often
mixed fact and fiction. They also collaborated on strategies to
undermine civil rights legislation and swapped propaganda ideas.
     
     The interstate commission's purpose was defined in minutes
of its second meeting, held the next month in Jackson. Eight aims
were listed, including: ``explore possible areas of cooperation
and coordination in the work of the separate commissions,''
cooperate in lobbying and filing anti-integregation litigation,
``exchange information for state use'' and ``gather and exchange
information concerning high school and college campus activities
in regard to Communistic influences, narcotic traffic, subversive
activities and pornographic literature.''
     
     The charter interstate members were ambitious, vowing to
``explore possibilities for encouraging establishment of similar
organizations in other states with immediate emphasis on states
where such organizations have been allowed to lapse.''
     
     That Mississippi led the interstate effort isn't surprising.
Documents show the state's sovereignty agency, established in
1956, was a template for the Louisiana and Alabama commissions,
established in 1960 and 1963 respectively.
     
     ``Congratulations on forming a Sovereignty Commission in
Alabama!'' Erle Johnston, a Mississippi Sovereignty Commission
director, wrote to Eli Howell, tapped to run Alabama's agency.
     
     ``We both agree there will be many areas in which the
commissions of both states can work together,'' Johnston wrote
after Howell visited the Mississippi offices to see how things
were done.
     
     Minutes of three interstate meetings are among 132,000
Mississippi Sovereignty Commission documents, all but 6 percent
of which were opened to the public Tuesday. Forty-two individuals
insisted their files remain sealed for privacy reasons.
     
     The files are not expected to produce ``smoking guns'' --
direct links between Mississippi officials and crimes or
conspiracies. The killings and other violence that scarred the
turbulent civil rights years have been well documented.
     
     Instead, the records -- a hodgepodge of petty detail,
rumors, innuendo and mind-numbing lists -- serve to reveal the
hysteria that characterized the thinking of the state's white
leaders in the 1950s, '60s and '70s.
     
     Suspicion and fear mark many of the files examined so far.
Any gathering of blacks was cause for concern, especially if
white outsiders took part. Under the banner of rooting out
communism, state officials eagerly spread ruinous lies.
     
     Knitting together complete, coherent accounts from the files
is a challenge. Many documents potentially harmful to the state
and commission members, for example, are known to have been
purged.
     
     In addition, the haphazard arrangement of files assembled by
amateur sleuths, coupled with the time limits imposed by the
archives department, allow only fragmentary glimpses into masses
of material.
     
     Two computers were set aside for the public. A third was
reserved for reporters. Citizens searching files were given
one-hour blocks; journalists had two hours at a time. Reporters
were free to use the other machines if they were free.
     
     By mid-day Wednesday, the Archives & History Department said
16 people had spent time on the public machines and six
journalists had registered on the third.
     
     Faulkner said the Interstate Sovereignty Commission, formed
late in the day as a losing battle waned, died as members fell by
the wayside.
     
     Louisiana's commission died first, when that Legislature cut
off funding in 1968. The Louisiana State Police last held the
agency's records, which have since been destroyed. At the time it
closed, Louisiana's commission owed several thousand dollars to
private detectives.
     
     The Alabama Sovereignty Commission lasted until 1973. Its
files were also made public by federal court order but were
heavily edited to protect spying victims from erroneous
information.
     
     The Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, created first, was
also felled in 1973. Legislators cut off funding and the agency
limped along until 1977, when its files were sealed for 50 years.
     
     Among the files is an undated letter from Jack Gould of
Baton Rouge, La., apparently a private investigator who did work
for Louisiana's commission. Gould wrote to Johnston, the
Mississippi commission director, asking for spy files on behalf
of a client. His letter also expressed the sad state of Louisiana
sovereignty.
     
     ``Louisiana's Sovereignty Com'n is in a state of confusion.
Nearly all personnel let go, including the public relations
counsel. New board to be appointed. Cleo and I still eating --
but not steak!''
 
     Copyright 1998 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
 
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