Mississippi releases papers from secret state commission
By PAUL PAYNE, Associated Press
JACKSON, Miss. (January 19, 2001 3:43 p.m. EST http://www.nandotimes.com)
- An investigator from a secret state agency concluded in 1964 there were no
signs of foul play after he examined the burned-out station wagon of three
civil rights workers who vanished in Mississippi. The revelation about the
infamous case, in which the three turned out to have been slain, was included
in 1,800 pages of documents released Thursday from the files of the
state-funded Sovereignty Commission. It was the third and final cache of
papers released by the state and shed new light on some of the darkest days
of the civil rights struggle. Documents show the commission, which was
created in 1957 and disbanded in 1973, kept tabs on more than 87,000
suspected subversives and civil rights sympathizers. Headed by state
legislators, governors and white businessmen opposed to desegregation, the
group was pledged to preserve the status quo in the segregated South. "It's a
very important story that needs to be told so that Mississippians can
understand what happens when the government is allowed to operate in
secrecy," said David Ingebretsen of the American Civil Liberties Union.
Documents show the group played on the fears of blacks and others by using
tactics that sometimes cost civil rights sympathizers their jobs. In one
document, a commission agent who examined the three freedom riders' station
wagon said there was "no physical evidence that these three civil rights
workers have met with foul play other than the burned car, which could easily
be part of a hoax." The bodies of the workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman
and Michael Schwerner, were later found buried beneath an earthen dam. No one
was ever convicted in the killings. Some scholars said the agency appeared to
be a cross between the Keystone Kops and the Soviet Union's KGB. "It had a
certain comic quality to it, but their actions also had some vicious
results," said Joe Parker, a political science professor at the University of
Southern Mississippi. Parker said the spy group had produced a primitive
documentary-style segregationist propaganda film called "Message from
Mississippi." "They were nefarious on the one hand and inept on the other,"
said Jerry Mitchell, a veteran newspaper reporter portrayed in the 1996
civil-rights movie "Ghosts of Mississippi". The spy agency was disbanded
after Gov. William Waller vetoed funding in 1973. The Legislature tried to
seal the documents but a federal judge ordered them made public in 1998. Some
are available on the Internet. "We're now filling in the gaps in what is
probably the most important chapter in this state's history," Ingebretsen
said. A total of 132,000 pages of commission documents have been made public
since 1998.
