Spies of Mississippi, a new film that exposes how in the ’50s and ’60s a little-known state agency called the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission hired spies to infiltrate the civil rights movement and squash attempts to desegregate the state and register African Americans to vote. Some of the spies were themselves African-American. The commission generated more than 160,000 pages of reports, many of which were shared with local police departments whose officers belonged to the Ku Klux Klan. The film looks at how some of those reports contributed to the 1964 deaths of the Freedom Summer activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Mickey Schwerner. Fifty years ago, that was.
Well, for more, we go to Jackson, Mississippi, where we’re joined by Jerry Mitchell, an investigative journalist for the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, won the release of more than 2,400 pages of commission records in 1989 and used those to reopen many cold cases from the civil rights era. His work helped lead to the 1994 conviction of the killer of Mississippi NAACP leader Medgar Evers and paved the way for 23 more convictions.
Jerry Mitchell and Dawn Porter talking:
the fact that they had spied on so many activists, the fact they had spied on Medgar Evers and later tried to help basically acquit the killer in that case, as well as reports on my own newspaper from back in the ’50s and ’60s. So, that was interesting, as well.
when I first heard this story, that there was not only a spy agency, government spy agency, but that there were also African-American activists who were involved in the spying, I thought that’s a piece of civil rights history that isn’t widely known, but it fills in a lot of the missing—connects the dots in a lot of ways. And I thought people would be interested in it. And I just was fascinated by the lengths that state government will go to subvert democracy.
the Sovereignty Commission is established in response to Brown v. Board of Education, the famous Supreme Court case that allows integration of schools. That case was seen by Mississippi as almost a declaration of war. It was viewed as an attack on Mississippi’s sovereignty and set into motion a vast response from the state. One of the things they did was establish this spy agency. And I think what’s so remarkable about this is it was a spy agency hidden in plain sight. There was an allocation of taxpayer dollars, $250,000, which in 1950s money is serious money. There’s an office that reports to the governor of Mississippi. And one of the things they did was hire spies.
So, in the early years, what you see in the ’50s is exactly what happens to Clyde Kennard. His crime was applying to go to a white school. And I thought it’s such wonderful tie-in to the segment you just did about how when a state government feels that its authority, its directions are being challenged, that anything goes. And so, they literally ruin this young man’s life. I think he had come from the University of Chicago. He wanted to be near his family. He wanted to continue his education. And to deliberately plant evidence in order to arrest him and sentence him to prison, I think, is just—I wish it was more shocking, but it’s certainly terrible.
it was a very powerful commission. It was actually headed by the governor of the state and the state’s most powerful leaders. You had people who were in the—you know, the most powerful members of the Legislature, the lieutenant governor. You know, all these people that held the highest offices, basically, had control of this agency, which had law enforcement powers, had judicial powers to subpoena, to get anything they wanted. It was frightening from a power perspective. You know, they had the blessings of the governor on down.
so the Sovereignty Commission initially starts by having white agents, former FBI men. Then they move on to have high-profile African Americans. Those African Americans were revealed. Their identities were revealed. And so, the commission realized it needed ordinary people. So, R.L. Bolden ended up being an ordinary American, extraordinary spy. He infiltrated the highest levels of the civil rights movement. He was at a very important training that the civil rights activists conducted before Freedom Summer.
In Ohio. So, in Ohio, all the students that were about to go south were brought together, and Bolden was at that meeting. He gave the license plate and the pictures of the civil rights workers Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner. Other people also gave this information, but he—we know that he gave this information to his handlers. His handlers turned that over to the Mississippi police, who were infiltrated by the Klan. The significance of that is, I think that the way the Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner murders are often described, it’s as if they were pulled over randomly for being in an interracial car, which couldn’t have been farther from the truth. They were being targeted by the Sovereignty Commission. Their every move was watched. This was quite a deliberate act to pull them over. And, you know, it results in their murders. It results in their deaths—and one of the most important events of the civil rights movement, which began—which did actually open up Mississippi, but what a tragic way to do it.
Lawrence Guyot, the civil rights activist in Mississippi since 1961. you had these spies that are hired by detective agencies. That’s basically how the Sovereignty Commission is able to operate and kind of keep one—a bit of distance, if that makes any sense, between them and the spies, so that the detective agency is reporting back to them, and they actually don’t record the name of the spy in the files. And so, that’s the way they kind of operated and were able to pull this off.
And I might add, you know, there are actually, in the case of like B.L. Bell, he actually volunteered his services, which I know seems very odd. But one of the reasons and one of the motivations for some of these spies was money. They were being paid. Percy Greene, who was an editor for the Jackson Advocate, was actually sent up north and paid to speak. And he and other speakers like him would say things like, “Oh, you know, we love Mississippi. We love segregation. We love the way it is right now.” And so, the idea behind this is not just spies, but also spreading propaganda, which, of course, like I said, was paid for.
Reverend H.H. Hume, really influential pastor, huge congregation and a radio audience in Mississippi—and you have to remember, at that time it was really difficult for African Americans to get that kind of influence. It turns out that he was providing information to the Sovereignty Commission and was being paid for it. You know, it’s as if Jesse Jackson was betraying the civil rights community today. That’s how significant he was in the state of Mississippi. And I think it speaks to, you know, what Jerry said. There’s a particular kind of betrayal when your spiritual leader and a person everyone wants to emulate and look up to turns out to be an informant.
everyone is outraged by finding out there were spies during a movement like the civil rights movement, that we all now agree led to great freedoms. But I really loved the segment you just did, and I think that there’s a tie in history. These tactics are not new. The Fourth Amendment and the First Amendment are not convenient. You cannot sometimes have democracy. You need to—you know, these are actually really enemies of our Constitution. And I think that those—when those tactics are still happening today, we need to understand that history.
PBS does this terrific thing where they let filmmakers do short pieces. And so, this was an interview with Myrlie Evers and Jerry Mitchell. And I love this piece so much, because one of the bright spots of this sordid tale was the relationship that developed between Jerry and Myrlie Evers, because it was really Jerry’s reporting—it was good, old-fashioned journalism, the kind that you do here, that Jerry did for his newspaper, and his reporting led to, after a third trial, the conviction of Medgar Ever’s killer. And their friendship is a result of that.
Jerry Mitchell, speaking with Myrlie Evers-Williams, the widow of the slain NAACP leader Medgar Evers, who was assassinated in 1963 in his driveway. Mitchell’s reporting helped lead to the conviction of Evers’ [killer], Byron De La Beckwith, in 1994.
JERRY MITCHELL: The Sovereignty Commission was created in 1956. So this—the idea behind this was preserve, you know, the white way of life, the Southern way of life. And they gave incredible powers. I mean, to look at the law, they gave it judicial powers. They gave it police powers. A lot of those who were prominent were afraid of coming out and publicly supporting the civil rights movement. The NAACP met in secret. That’s how frightening it was back then. In other words, you might be killed just for belonging to the NAACP. And, of course, Medgar Evers, who was the head of the NAACP in Mississippi, was assassinated in ’63.
All those records that were connected with the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission were sealed. I was able to get my hands on 2,400 pages of Sovereignty Commission records, and this was back in 1989. And what those files show was at the same time the state of Mississippi was prosecuting Byron De La Beckwith for the murder of Medgar Evers, this other arm of the state, the Sovereignty Commission, which, by the way, was headed by the governor, was secretly assisting the defense, trying to get him acquitted. And my story ran October 1st, 1989. The authorities reopened the Medgar Evers case as a result of the story, and Byron De La Beckwith was reprosecuted and convicted, February 5th, 1994.
And I remember, too, I mean, especially, the day that the conviction came. And I know you do, too.
Medgar Evers was one of the original targets of the Sovereignty Commission. So, the remarkable story that Jerry just tells you and about those first two trials, the Sovereignty Commission was involved in assuring that there was a hung jury in those two trials. So while the state—you know, the state—it’s a state prosecution. It’s not a federal trial; it’s a state prosecution. So the state is prosecuting, bringing, trying to convict Byron De La Beckwith. The Sovereignty Commission, headed by the governor, headed by the same state, is doing jury research and looking to find people who have separatist segregation views so that there was no chance of a conviction. So, Medgar Evers’ death was one of the lowlights of the Sovereignty Commission’s efforts.
Juanita Milam ran in the Sun Herald. Few noticed her passing, despite her being the widow of the killer in one of the nation’s most notorious crimes. She was the widow of J.W. Milam, who, together with Roy Bryant, his brother-in-law, killed Emmett Till in the summer of 1955.
And William Bradford Huie did that interview with them, and they basically just confessed that they had beaten him. They beat him brutally and killed him—and, of course, would have gotten away with it completely, in terms of not even having a trial, but, of course, Emmett Till’s mother, Mamie Till, insisted on having an open casket, because she wanted the world to see. And as a result of that—you know, of course, there were—that was in Chicago. There were a quarter of a million people who actually came to that funeral, passed by, saw that. The photograph of him literally went around the world. In that photograph of him, their monstrous act basically became absorbed in his body. He literally looked like the monster, the monstrous act that they committed against him. And so, the world was outraged. And so, the world saw what they did and what they got away with, and everyone knew.
they could have been charged and convicted of kidnapping, but they couldn’t be—because they had been acquitted of murder, you couldn’t retry them on that same charge, because of the—you know, the constitutional prohibition against double jeopardy. If the jury had hung up like in the Beckwith case, they could have—they could have been tried again.
Gideon’s Army. it was really interesting to do a historical piece, because I think that the system of segregation that precedes our criminal justice system, I think that there are direct ties. You know, we have a history where we’ve created a separate—you know, we’ve created—there’s one set of laws for people who are black and brown, and there’s another set of laws for white people. And that was institutionalized in the South in the ’50s. Today, we don’t have laws that separate people, but we have a circumstance that separates people. So more black and brown people are arrested, are targeted for drug convictions and are in prison. And I think that understanding that this history of separation and of targeting people of color, it didn’t just start, you know, today. There’s a history there.
role of the media, The Clarion-Ledger, The Jackson Advocate, other newspapers at that time.
that was one of the shocking things to me as I read the papers for the first time, was basically seeing about my own newspaper and how that they were very much involved in trying to thwart the civil rights movement. They were getting reports directly, believe it or not, from the Sovereignty Commission up until 1968. And there are memos where The Clarion-Ledger is upset because they’re cutting off the memos that they’ve been getting all the time. You see things, for example, with The Jackson Advocate, which was the African-American newspaper, which the editor, Percy Greene, was on their payroll, this commission’s payroll.
what happened in one case is that the commission decided they wanted to smear Martin Luther King, and so they wrote a story, gave it to The Jackson Advocate to publish verbatim, which it published verbatim in The Jackson Advocate, which The Clarion-Ledger then picked up and attributed to The Jackson Advocate, because that way it looked more legitimate, I guess, you know, for lack of a better term, because a black newspaper printed it before The Clarion-Ledger.
but they printed it verbatim from Sovereignty Commission. They just handed it to them, and they printed it.
Percy Greene is an influential newspaper editor. This is where people in Mississippi, black people, are getting their news. So, for the white separatist Sovereignty Commission to write that kind of article, it carries huge weight. Remember, this is before cellphones. This is before mass television even. Most of these people did not have televisions. So newspapers, churches, all those meetings are really important sources of information. So, Percy Greene is trusted in the community. If he says something, people are likely to believe it’s true.
And if someone passes it on to him, he sends it on to the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission.
To have that article picked up then reinforces its accuracy. The other thing—and I believe it was The Clarion-Ledger, although it may have been another paper, the map of where the three civil rights workers were buried appears on the front page of that paper. And that was a direct warning to any outsiders who were going to come here and cause trouble in Mississippi: You might end up 14 feet under an earthen dam, as well. And so, there was a map of where the three civil rights workers were buried. It was a hand-drawn map. It was done by a Sovereignty Commission investigator spy, given to the newspaper and published the next day. So, this wasn’t an investigative effort.
The next day after the bodies were discovered. It’s on the front page of—and it was issued by the Sovereignty Commission spies. And it was issued as a warning: If you come here, you’re going to end up under the earthen dam, as well.
Percy Greene was on the payroll of the racist Mississippi Sovereignty Commission. So that happened in the early ’50s. So, it was—in the late ’50s. And so, Percy Greene is discovered. Reverend Humes is discovered.
Reverend Humes was the African-American minister with the largest congregation in that Mississippi area. And then B.L. Bell, who was a superintendent of schools, who was actually the uncle of Margaret Block and Sam Block, who were very active in the movement. He was not only providing information about his own family, he provided information about students who were doing voter registration. So these are kids—17-, 18-year-olds—and he would tell the Sovereignty Commission what they were doing. They were doing voter registration drives. It literally endangered their lives.
here’s where Jerry Mitchell’s reporting is so extraordinary and is—you know, this is a real victory for good journalism. So, the last act of the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission in the ’70s—it wasn’t officially disbanded until 1977, so this is not ancient history. But their very last act is to seal the records for 50 years. The ACLU sues to open those records, and in the ’90s the records are opened. But before the records are actually opened, Jerry Mitchell cultivated a source and got a source to release him a little over a thousand pages of records. And his reporting and his writing about what was in those files helped to secure the eventual release of all of the records, which was a much larger treasure trove of information. It was very much like your first guest said. They had no idea how many pages of information would be revealed—187,000 pages, 87,000 American names. And all of this is online. You can go to MDAH, and if your relative was in the civil rights movement, you can look up their name and see if they were spied on.
Agent X, this man, Bolden. One of the ways they figured out who he was was the names of the people gathered at each meeting that the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission had.
these were spy reports, so they would list who was in attendance at every meeting. And when the civil right—when the records are released, the civil rights activists look over and say, “Who were the spies? Who were these people?” They thought they knew everyone. And as you mentioned, eventually, Bolden becomes the vice president of the NAACP. This is not a person who seemed like a creepy outsider. He was very much an insider. He was all over the South. And so, they start comparing. They start saying, “Jane, John and Sue are listed. But Bolden was also there.” But he never shows up in the records, and they start to realize there’s a pattern there.
The pattern that links all these meetings is the one name that’s not mentioned in the spy report and it’s the spy himself.
This was definitely a project, a labor of love. It took more than four years to make this film. And one of the great assets that we had—I used to work for ABC News, and they—the news networks covered the civil rights movement, and they shot on film. So, there was this remarkable treasure trove of original footage that was from the civil rights movement. And so, a lot—I really have to thank ABC. They worked with me to make that footage available so you can see it. Some of it hasn’t really been seen before. And then there are, you know, just a number of—but it’s really mostly, you know, that coverage. That was a time when we sent reporters to stay, and so they went to the South, and they did interviews. And they stayed, and they got remarkable things.
It takes time to cover and to really understand and to do interviews. So you see in the film an interview with a very young Bob Moses, where his voice cracks, and he talks about his plan. That’s the kind of coverage that was done then, for all of Freedom Summer, to document, you know, step by step what was happening in that freedom movement.
two of the three civil rights activists who were killed that summer—and there weren’t just three people— who were killed that summer. Remember, when they were digging up bodies to find them, they kept saying, “No, it’s not them. No, it’s not them.”
that’s actually one of the reasons why the three—the map is published and the three civil rights workers’ bodies are buried, because the FBI goes down, they start indiscriminately digging river—digging up rivers—and there’s a very famous song about, like, in the Mississippi River—and they started finding all these other bodies, that the police would tell a widow, “Your husband’s off in Cuba. He’s left you.” Well, it turned out, of course, they were lynched or they were murdered. And there were so many other bodies that the state of Mississippi said, “Stop digging. We’ll tell you where they are.” And that’s how the civil rights workers’ bodies are actually tipped off and found.
it was Bill Moyers, right, who got the call at the White House when he was working for LBJ that the bodies of the three civil rights workers—this is weeks, weeks later from when they were killed—when they got the word that they had been found.
There’s footage that we have. It’s not in the film, and I wish we had had another hour to do for this. But there’s a call, Johnson and Hoover, and they’re talking about—Johnson says, “Well, maybe they’ve just disappeared.” And, you know, the FBI says, “I don’t think that that’s what happened here.” So there were—the White House was involved and under—not involved in the killings, but understood that eventually their bodies were going to be found.
Another nice thing that’s happened as a result of this film is I’ve made contact with the Andrew Goodman Foundation. And so, they’ve started—his brother, David Goodman, and his wonderful wife—have started a foundation. And they do a thing for civil rights heroes. And they encourage people to identify people who are doing today civil rights activity. It may take different forms.
Carolyn Goodman, Andrew’s mother, has just been published. It’s a terrific book. The foundation is doing great work. And we’re actually creating a digital app that is going to highlight the film and do lesson plans for young people, so that they can remember this history, because, you know, that’s what’s happening now, is we are—we don’t have people who were there. Those people are dying. And we start to think that maybe this wasn’t so bad, maybe it wasn’t that dangerous. And it’s so important to understand how recent that was, how dangerous it was and how much we owe those people who literally gave or risked their lives.
– source democracynow.org
Jerry Mitchell, investigative reporter for The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi. His work has helped put four Klansmen behind bars, including the assassin of NAACP leader Medgar Evers in 1963 and the man who orchestrated the Klan’s 1964 killings of three civil rights workers. He is writing a book on cold cases from the civil rights era, called Race Against Time.
Dawn Porter, award-winning producer and director of the new documentary, Spies of Mississippi. She also directed the film, Gideon’s Army.