This voice from the past is a reminder of why voting technology activists need to keep on the front burner the racial politics they embraced widely up through January 6, 2005.
Nations were made by men, not by paper Constitutions and paper ballots. We're not free because we have a Constitution. We have a Constitution because our pioneer fathers who cleared the wilderness and dared the might of kings were free men . . . if you can make men out of paper, then it is possible with a scratch of a pen in the hands of a tyrannical judge or a vicious attorney general, to transform by its magic 18 million blacks into 18 million kings....
This is a white man's government, conceived by white man and maintained by white men through every year of its history. And by God of our fathers, it shall be ruled by the white man until the archangels shall call at the end of time!
(A FIVE POINT ACTION PROGRAM: AN ADDRESS BY LOUIS W. HOLLIS, Executive Director, CitIzens' Councils of America to THE REORGANIZATION RALLY SAVANNAH CITIZENS' COUNCIL SAVANNAH, GEORGIA, July 22, 1963, p. 17)
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Yes. The words in the the Five Point Action Program are unbelievable … but it has not been that many years ago that Mississippi was under seige and these were the words of its leaders – people like John Satterfield of Yazoo City (twice head of the American Bar Association).
Satterfield used his powerful position in Mississippi’s fight against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, using his title when signing off on racist literature (how embarrassing for the ABA) and helping to match up Mississippi with an old Nazi to fund the fight (Wycliffe Draper, The Pioneer Fund).
Frightening? Today Mississippi’s U. S. senators, governor, numerous state legislators continue to meet with “the folks who brought us” the White Citizens Councils, the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission and the CCC – Council of Conservative Citizens – a clone of the earlier councils, now including open lines to Neo-Nazi’s, Indentity Movement, New Confederacy Movement and every other hate group that Morris Dees tries to warn us about:
Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Reports, From Fall 2004, Issue 114… “five years later, Southern lawmakers are still meeting with the CCC … no fewer than 38 federal, state and local elected officials who are still in office today have attended CCC events since 2000, most of them giving speeches to local chapters …”
So think about this … the CC Plan comes from the Citizens Councils days. If they sound scary, take a look at what the morphed CC (the CCC) is about these days …and then realize that the man who started the CC, and then the CCC is still alive (Robert “Tut” Patterson) and still writing for his newest group.(He lives about 30 miles from my house!)
These folks are still around and they are making sure their organizations will live on. Afterall, they are the sons of their fathers. sk
(Not many Mississippians have looked at – or even know about – Sovereignty Commission files since Mississippi’s media has dismissed the files, calling them “the works of keystone cops.” Simply not true. These records are a critical piece of U. S. history and need to be read and written about)…
“Understand Mississippi, and you understand all of Democracy.” Anonymous.