Spirit Of Cooperation

MISSISSIPPI TRIED TO RALLY SOUTHERN NEIGHBORS TO SHARE SPY FILES

JAY HUGHES, Associated Press Writer

(03-18) 14:24:14 - 1998

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. . . .

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.

(Whole thing.)