Letter from Rita Bender, widow of Michael Schwerner, to MS Governor Haley Barbour, published in the Clarion Ledger last week:
It is unfortunate that it is not yet well known that the state of Mississippi funded the state Sovereignty Commission from 1957 through 1973. The funding came from taxes paid by the citizenry — which means that the African-American population of the state, some 40 percent of Mississippi's population, was forced to pay for the governmental entity which spied upon them; caused them to lose jobs and to be forced off the land they farmed; and participated in crimes of beatings, church burnings and murder.
The Sovereignty Commission funded the White Citizens Councils, which used this money to launch a campaign of disinformation both within the state and in the Northern states. The councils spread racist ideology which served to encourage violence.
The Sovereignty Commission used its funds to hire staff investigators and private detectives. It employed informants. Information gathered included license numbers and vehicle descriptions for persons identified as civil rights activists, as well as physical descriptions of these persons and their day-to-day activities. Medgar Evers was spied upon in this manner for years before his death. So were Mickey Schwerner and I.
The information gathered was passed on to law enforcement officers around the state, many of whom were themselves members of the Ku Klux Klan. There was no secret that the Klan and the police, sheriffs' departments and state highway patrol officers were often one and the same.
Bankers were notified of the identity of African Americans who attempted to register to vote, and bankers then called in loans. The commission contacted employers and land owners about persons attempting to register, or who were otherwise engaged in civil rights activities, resulting in people losing jobs or being forced off land which they had sharecropped for generations.
At the request of the defense, the commission investigated the jury panel in the first trial of Byron De La Beckwith for the murder of Medgar Evers in 1964. The commission reported back to the defense its findings as to which members of the panel were not expected to be favorable to Beckwith.
The defense was then in a position to eliminate these jurors from the panel. An arm of the state was assisting the defense in a case the state was supposed to be prosecuting. This is a grotesque perversion of the criminal justice system.
The commission provided its investigative reports to The Clarion-Ledger and other newspapers in the state until 1967, and those reports were then used by the newspapers to distort and defame the civil rights movement. (The Clarion-Ledger has apologized for its activities.)
The commission requested newspapers to suppress the reporting of violence against black persons. For example, the commission succeeded in preventing the reporting of the beatings and church burning in Philadelphia on June 16, 1964. This coverage was omitted from news reports to accommodate the request of a Philadelphia banker, who was seeking to convince an out-of-state investor to bring his business to Mississippi.
Each successive governor served as the Sovereignty Commission chairman. He was sent the investigative reports of the commission. Each governor had knowledge of the full range of shameful, illegal, and often violent activities encouraged or directly engaged in by the commission staff.
Why else can there not yet be closure? There were many acts of brutality, and far too many murders, which were never acknowledged. There are many violent criminals, living their lives among their neighbors in communities throughout the state, who have never been charged or punished for their crimes.
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