Black History : The spies of Mississippi: black men who spied on Civil Rights activists & Movement for 30 pieces...

Kadijah

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Apr 7, 2013
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.... of silver.

I am breathing so hard. My chest is rising and falling. I can barely catch my breath after watching the PBS Independent Lens program: The Spies of Mississippi. They name names. Black men one would never DREAM would betray us the way those... whatevas.... betrayed not just the Civil Rights Movement, but their own people - the black people of Mississippi.

Prominent among the race traitors were:

1. A leader in the National Baptist Convention
2. The Vice President of the NAACP
3. The publisher of one of the most influential black newspapers in Mississippi

For your consideration....

As one black Mississippian put it: 'There's America. Then there's the South. Then there's Mississippi'

It all began with:
The Mississippi Sovereign Commission

In 1956, the Mississippi State legislature enacted a bill that was signed into law by the governor of the state entitled "The Mississippi Sovereign Commission." Mississippi whites comprised approx. 50% of the population and Mississippi blacks comprised approx. 50%. By State law, they were segregated in almost every aspect of life; even in those aspects in defiance of American Law. The Mississippi Sovereign Commission was set up to ensure this perpetual segregation where whites rule and blacks were subservient.

The Commission started with Public Relations films showing blacks working placidly in cotton field, women wearing shade hats and nice dresses, black men working in separate jobs from whites, tall black men answering to short white (pot-bellied) bosses, each seemingly respectful to the other, ad nauseum. Every Mississippian, they postulated, was happy in their "place." Mississippians of every race lived happy, productive lives and no one of either race wanted the Mississippi way of life to change.

In another film, they show the (black) Rev. J.W. Jones, pastor of a New Albany, MS church and publisher of a state-wide newspaper who "affirms" the love and mutual respect of black and white Mississippians where there are "White Only" and "Black Only" signs over every public convenience, including "paper cups" in dispensers for a sole water fountain labeled "Black Only"/"White Only" (see cute little black girl taking her paper cup from a Black Only dispenser).

In the beginning, the Mississippi Sovereign Commission was a small agency under the control of the Governor or Mississippi. Its staff consisted of professional law enforcement charged with keeping track of Civil Rights groups in the state. Any black person who registered to vote in the eyes of the Commission, was an enemy of the State of Mississippi. Blacks who rented from a white person were evicted. Blacks who worked for a white person was fired. Yet thousands of black Mississippians defied the state that was committed to an apartheid system that would make South Africa blush. At the helm of this system was the Mississippi Sovereign Commission.

Within 4 years of its inception, when the Civil Rights Movement was coming on strong, the Commission transformed itself into a full-blown spy agency. It started off small with a couple of agents, usually state police investigators and retired FBI agents who were the core investigating Civil Rights activists and in the main, the NAACP. One of its first victims was Clyde Kennard, a native-born Hattisburg, MS black man whose "crime" was to apply to Mississippi State College, an all-white institution (the few blacks who attended college did so at HCBUs and other black institutions - in 1960, only about 5% of blacks, nation-wide, held college degrees. In Mississippi, the percentage was even lower).

The Commission had multiple agents investigating Kennard, his family and friends. They investigated Kennard's time in Mississippi, his time in Chicago (what schools he attended, his friends, etc.), his relatives in Chicago, his time in the military, the reason he returned to Mississippi, i.e., his mother was sick (one of the many reports noted that there was no marriage license of Kennard's mother and step-father on file in Mississippi and that they were probably living "common-law" - that's how deep they dug). With an exemplary background, thus nothing to deny his application to attend a state college, the Commission had its agents plant $20 worth of chicken feed on his parents' chicken farm, then arrest Kennard for theft. An all-white jury took 10 minutes to find him guilty. Kennard received 7 years at hard labor on a chain gang in Parchman Prison, the worst and most notorious prison in the United States. When he became terminally ill with cancer, the racists released him from prison, though he was not given a pardon. 3 months later, Clyde Kennard was dead.

All this because he applied to go to college.

Clyde Kennard (June 12, 1927 – July 4, 1963) was an American civil rights pioneer and martyr from Mississippi.[1] In the 1950s, he attempted several times to enroll at Mississippi Southern College (now known as University of Southern Mississippi) to complete his undergraduate degree started at University of Chicago. USM was still segregated and reserved for European Americans.

After he published a letter about integrated education, the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission conspired to have him arrested on false charges. He was convicted and sentenced to seven years at Parchman Penitentiary, a high-security prison. Although he was terminally ill with cancer, the governor refused to pardon him, but released him in January 1963. After 2005 and publication of evidence that Kennard had been framed, supporters tried to secure a posthumous pardon for him, but Governor Haley Barbour refused.

Kennard was born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi in 1927; he moved to Chicago at the age of 12 to aid his injured sister, Sarah. he was also a brave young African American. He stayed and graduated from Wendell Phillips High School, then entered the U.S. Army.
After serving as a paratrooper during the Korean War, as a veteran he returned to Chicago and started college at the University of Chicago. In 1955, after completing his junior year, Kennard returned to Hattiesburg, Mississippi to care for his stepfather, who had become disabled and needed help. Kennard purchased land in Eatonville to start a chicken farm. He taught Sunday school at the Mary Magdalene Baptist Church.[2]

On three separate occasions (1956, 1957 and 1959), Kennard sought to enroll at Mississippi Southern College, one of Mississippi's premier institutions, which was still segregated and had an exclusively white student body.[3] [4] [5] Mississippi governor James P. Coleman offered to have the state pay his tuition elsewhere in the state, but Kennard declined. He preferred that college as it was the closest to his home, a major factor given his family situation. In Brown v. Board of Education (1955), the US Supreme Court had ruled that segregation in public educational facilities was unconstitutional.

On December 6, 1958, Kennard published a letter in the Hattiesburg American newspaper. He wrote that he was a “segregationist by nature” but “integrationist by choice,” and gave a reasoned explanation as to why segregation in education was impractical and bound to be replaced by one integrated system.[6]


Zack Van Landingham of the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission urged J. H. White, the African-American president of Mississippi Vocational College, to persuade Kennard to end his quest at Mississippi Southern College. When Kennard could not be dissuaded, Van Landingham and Dudley Connor, a Hattiesburg, Mississippi lawyer, worked together to suppress his activism. Files from the Sovereignty Commission, which were opened in 1998, showed that its officials considered forcing Kennard into an accident or bombing his car.[7]

IMPRISONMENT
The Sovereignty Commission conspired to have Kennard framed for a crime. On September 15, 1959, he was arrested by constables Charlie Ward and Lee Daniels for reckless driving. After he was jailed, Ward and Daniels claimed before Justice of the Peace T. C. Hobby to have found five half pints of whiskey, along with other liquor,[8] under the seat of his car. Mississippi was a "dry" state, and possession of liquor was illegal until 1966. Kennard was convicted and fined $600. He soon became the victim of an unofficial local economic boycott (also a tactic of the Sovereignty Commission), which cut off his credit.

Kennard was arrested again on September 25, 1960 with an alleged accomplice for the theft of $25 worth of chicken feed from the Forrest County Cooperative warehouse. Kennard went to trial, with the accomplice, Johnny Lee Roberts, testifying that Kennard paid him to steal the feed.[9] On November 21, 1960, an all-white jury deliberated 10 minutes and found Kennard guilty. (At this time, because of having been essentially disfranchised and unable to vote in Mississippi since 1890, blacks could not serve on juries.)

Kennard was sentenced to seven years in prison, to be served in Parchman Penitentiary, a high-security facility. Despite his alleged role in the crime, Roberts was given five years' probation and freed. Years later, Roberts testified under oath that Kennard was innocent: "Kennard did not ask me to steal, Kennard did not ask me to break into the co-op, Kennard did not ask me to do anything illegal."[10]

Just after the conclusion of the trial, Mississippi NAACP official Medgar Evers was cited for contempt after issuing a statement that the conviction was "a mockery of judicial justice." Evers was fined $100 and sentenced to 30 days in jail, but on June 12, 1961, the Mississippi Supreme Court overturned the conviction.

CANCER AND DEATH
While imprisoned in 1961, Kennard was diagnosed with colon cancer and taken to the University of Mississippi hospital for surgery.[citation needed] The medical staff recommended that Kennard be put in their custody or that they be allowed to make regular visits to check on his condition.[citationneeded] Authorities sent him back to Parchman Prison, where he worked as a laborer.

Civil rights leaders in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, embarked on a campaign to secure Kennard's release. After the story gained national attention in 1963, Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett gave Kennard an "indefinite suspended sentence.

Kennard was released on January 30. The comedian Dick Gregory paid for his flight to Chicago, where he went for medical treatment. He twice underwent surgery at Billings Hospital on the University of Chicago campus over the next five months, but died of cancer 10 days after the latter procedure.

On July 7, a funeral service for Kennard was held at Metropolitan Funeral Parlor in Chicago. A poem he wrote on April 16, 1962 was read to the congregation. Sensing his limited lifespan, he titled the poem,

"Ode to the Death Angel:"
Oh here you come again
Old chilly death of Ol'
To plot out life
And test immortal soul
I saw you fall against the raging sea
I cheated you then and now you'll not catch me
I know your face
It's known in every race
Your speed is fast
And along the way
Your shadow you cast
High in the sky
You thought you had me then
I landed safely
But here you are again
I see you paused upon that forward pew
When you think I'm asleep
I'm watching you
Why must you hound me so everywhere I go?
It's true my eyes are dim
My hands are growing cold
Well take me on then, that
I might at last become my soul

Three days later, he was buried in his family's plot at Mary Magdelene Cemetery in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
 
The images are self-explanatory, but the song is dope:


Foreward by the Author of The Spies of Mississippi - a MUST watch!


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Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission



The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission was a state agency directed by the governor of Mississippi that existed from 1956 to 1977, also known as the Sov-Com.[2] The commission's stated objective was to "[...] protect the sovereignty of the state of Mississippi, and her sister states" from "federal encroachment." Initially, it was formed to coordinate activities to portray the state, and the legal racial segregation enforced by the state, in a more positive light.

Creation and structure
The Commission was created by the Mississippi Legislature in 1956 in reaction to the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, in which the Court held that racially segregated public schools were unconstitutional. The "sovereignty" the state was trying to protect was against federal enforcement of civil rights laws, such as the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act, and U.S. Supreme Court rulings. The membership consisted of 12 appointed and legislatively elected members, and the Governor of Mississippi, Lieutenant Governor of Mississippi, the Speaker of the House of Representatives of Mississippi and the Attorney General of Mississippi ex officio. The governor sat as the chairman. Its initial budget was $250,000 a year.

Activities
As the state's public relations campaign failed to dampen rising civil rights activism, the commission put people to work as a de facto intelligence organization trying to identify those citizens in Mississippi who might be working for civil rights, be allied with communists, or just tipped state surveillance if their associations, activities, and travels did not seem to conform to segregationist norms. Swept up on lists of people under suspicion by such broad criteria were tens of thousands of African-American and white professionals, teachers, and government workers in agricultural and other agencies, churches and community organizations. The "commission penetrated most of the major civil-rights organizations in Mississippi, even planting clerical workers in the offices of activist attorneys. It informed police about planned marches or boycotts and encouraged police harassment of African-Americans who cooperated with civil rights groups. Its agents obstructed voter registration by blacks and harassed African-Americans seeking to attend white schools."[3]

The commission's activities included attempting to preserve the state's segregation and Jim Crow laws, opposing school integration, and ensuring portrayal of the state "in a positive light." Among its first employees were a former FBI agent and a transfer from the state highway patrol. "The agency outwardly extolled racial harmony, but it secretly paid investigators and spies to gather both information and misinformation."[4] Staff of the commission worked closely with, and in some cases funded, the notorious White Citizens' Councils. From 1960 to 1964, it secretly funded the White Citizens Council, a private organization, with $190,000 of state funds.[5] The commission also used its intelligence-gathering capabilities to assist in the defense of Byron De La Beckwith, murderer of Medgar Evers, during his second trial. Sov-Com investigator Andy Hopkins provided De La Beckwith's attorneys with information on the potential jurors, which the attorneys used during the selection process.[6]

Demise and legacy
The commission officially closed in 1977, four years after Governor Bill Waller vetoed funding. After the agency was disbanded, state lawmakers ordered the files sealed until 2027 (50 years later). After a lawsuit, in 1989 a federal judge ordered the records opened, with some exceptions for still-living people. Legal challenges delayed the records' availability to the public until March 1998. Once unsealed, records revealed more than 87,000 names of people about whom the state had collected information, or included as "suspects." Today, the records of the commission are available online for search.[7] The records also revealed the state's complicity in the murders of three civil rights workers at Philadelphia, Mississippi; its investigator A.L. Hopkins passed on information about the workers, including the car license number of a new civil rights worker, to the Commission, which passed the information to the Sheriff of Neshoba County, who was implicated in the murders.[8]

The Mississippi Sovereignty Commission (MSC) created a network of black double agents

Under the auspices of the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, cops took down license plates of people who attended NAACP and other civil rights organization meetings. They would then publish the names and addresses of everyone whose tags they copied in the newspapers. This was clearly a terrorist action as they were subject to night visits by the KKK as well as being attacked by other white individuals and organizations such as the White Citizens' Councils. But the commission realized that to be truly effective, they'd need to recruit black agents. The spies (and double agents = blacks who ostensibly were working with CR organizations like the NAACP and double-crossing them by naming names and reporting their activities to the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission.... NOTE: Until Dr. King led the Montgomery Bus Strike, the NAACP was practically the ONLY Civil Rights organization in the South, so almost everyone targeted was an NAACP member).... the spies and double agents who worked for the Commission were African-Americans who were PAID to spy on other blacks. One otherwise "blacked out" report stated:

"It is the considered opinion of those Negro friends of ours.... that we should.... let the Negro agitators feel the pinch of our displeasure."
In other words, the 'culud' spies were saying to come down hard on the civil rights activists.

Spies and Double Agents:
B.L. Bell, black race traitor - of Cleveland, Mississippi was not "recruited" by the MSC. When he heard about the commission, he wrote them a letter wherein he volunteered his services. Bell's niece-in-law was interviewed. She said that Bell didn't associate with his wife's family (her aunt) because they weren't what he called, of the "thinking class." In other words, he was a house Negro and they were field Negroes. He felt superior to her working class family, said the niece, and wanted things to stay that way.

Rev. H. H. Humes, black race traitor - pastor of the St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church, one of the biggest and most respected preachers and churches in Cleveland, MS was another informant. Humes was a meticulous 'spy.' He funneled in reports, the names of NAACP activists, any new tactics the leadership were going to employ, new events, back to the Commission. He was a model of how the commission could tap conservative black leaders with their OWN issues against a black organization - through the power of money (he was PAID - they showed the receipts) and the power of "prestige" (had white friends in high places) - into a source AGAINST the black communities in Mississippi.

Percy Green, black race traitor - publisher of the Jackson Advocate Newspaper, the biggest black newspaper in Mississippi as well as leader of the National Baptist Convention with over 100,000 black members. He supplied information on Medgar Evers which the commission put into the hands of their "enforcement" arm, the KKK, and led to his death. Percy didn't like "student, young NAACP" folk and he was especially resentful of the "upstart" Medgar Evers. As on MS woman put it: "They (the black race traitors) could lose their social standing in the community if you had equality." (Which is why I say - house Negro vs field Negro)!

The Associated Press in the 1950's got hold of 2 checks written by the MSC to its black informants:

One was to Percy Green: $300 for "printing and distributing copies of editorials on Parallel Program" (code for MSC)
The other was to Rev. Humes: $129.34 for "travel expense."

The Associated Press broke the story about the 2 prominent black leaders being paid under the table by an agency dedicated to preserving segregation (Mississippi Sovereignty Commission). When blacks in Mississippi found out, their was a big outcry against Green and his newspaper. They demanded, also, that Greene be taken out of his role as head of the National Baptist Convention.

The outcry against Rev Humes proved to be his undoing. He suffered a heart attack while walking home from a friend's house and died. Additionally, while his family was grieving, agents from the MSC entered his house and unbeknownst to the family, removed all files related to the Commission (showed the report they filed stating mission accomplished).

T.L. Bell was outted as a spy, as well. No longer effective in that role (since with the publishing of the newspaper article, all knew him to be a race traitor), he (this piece of shiit?) wrote many letters to the Commission saying "I have this expense, that expense. I was wondering if you could help me with...." The MSC completely ignored the snitch, spy, race traitor. They gave him not one more piece of silver.

Other reasons the race traitors spied and informed on their friends, relatives and neighbors:

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: "There are all too many Negroes all over this country who have segregated minds. They have been told so long that they don't count, that they are inferior, that they've come to believe that. This is the tragedy of segregation - not merely what it has done to the Negro in terms of physical inconvenience, but what it has done to his soul, what it has done to him psychologically."

Black Mississippian: "WE had a lot of people who felt there was no way the Civil Rights Movement could win, so why not get on the winning side early? Then, there were others who said 'well, the government asked me to do it. The government doesn't do illegal things, does it?' "

When demonstrations against the segregated South erupted all over the U.S., the MSC decided they had to ramp up their activities to stop the Civil Rights Movement. After 1960, it assumed its most malignant form when Ross Barnett was elected governor of Mississippi.
 
This is the importance of Medgar Evers, the man Percy Green's spying on for the MSC got assassinated

Born: Medgar Wiley Evers
(1925-07-02)July 2, 1925
Decatur, Mississippi, U.S.

Died: June 12, 1963(1963-06-12) (aged 37)
Jackson, Mississippi, U.S.



Medgar Wiley Evers (July 2, 1925 – June 12, 1963) was an African-American civil rights activist from Mississippi involved in efforts to overturn segregation at the University of Mississippi. After returning from overseas military service in World War II and completing his secondary education, he became active in the civil rights movement. He became a field secretary for the NAACP.

Evers was assassinated by Byron De La Beckwith, a member of the White Citizens' Council. As a veteran, Evers was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.[2][3] His murder and the resulting trials inspired civil rights protests, as well as numerous works of art, music, and film.

Early life

Evers was born July 2, 1925, in Decatur, Mississippi, third of the five children (including older brother Charlie Evers) of James and Jesse Evers; the family also included Jesse's two children from a previous marriage.[4] The Everses owned a small farm and James worked at a sawmill.[5] Evers walked12 miles to school to earn his high-school diploma.[6] From 1943 to 1945 he fought in the European Theater and the Battle of Normandy with the United States Army during World War II, and was discharged honorably as a sergeant.[7]

In 1948 Evers enrolled at Alcorn College (a historically black college, now Alcorn State University) majoring in business administration.[8] He alsocompeted on the debate, football, and track teams, sang in the choir, and was junior class president.[9] He earned his Bachelor of Arts in 1952.[8]

On December 24, 1951, he married classmate Myrlie Beasley.[10] Together they had three children: Darrell Kenyatta, Reena Denise, and James VanDyke.[11] Darrell died in February 2001 of colon cancer.[12]

Activism

The couple moved to Mound Bayou, Mississippi, where Evers became a salesman for T. R. M. Howard's Magnolia Mutual Life Insurance Company.[13] Howardwas also president of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL);[14] Evers helped organize the RCNL's boycott of filling stations which denied blacks use of the stations' restrooms.[15] Evers and his brother Charles also attended the RCNL's annual conferences in Mound Bayou between 1952 and1954, which drew crowds of ten thousand or more.[16]

Evers applied to the then-segregated University of Mississippi Law School in 1954 but his application was rejected.[17] He submitted his applicationin concert with the NAACP as a test case.[18]

In late 1954 Evers' was named the NAACP's first field secretary for Mississippi.[5] In this position, he helped organize boycotts and set up new local chapters of the NAACP. He was involved with James Meredith's efforts to enroll in the University of Mississippi in the early 1960s.[18] Evers' also helped Dr. Gilbert Mason Sr. organize the Biloxi Wade-Ins, protests against segregation efforts on the Mississippi Gulf Coastbeaches.[19]

Evers’ civil rights leadership and investigative work made him a target of white supremacists. In the weeks leading up to his death, the hostility directed towards him grew. His public investigations into the murder of Emmett Till and his vocal support of Clyde Kennard had made him a prominent black leader. On May 28, 1963, a Molotov cocktail was thrown into the carport of his home.[20] On June 7, 1963, Evers was nearly run down by a car after he emerged from the Jackson NAACP office.[13]

In the early morning of June 12, 1963, just hours after President John F. Kennedy's speech on national television in support of civil rights, Evers pulled into his driveway after returning from a meeting with NAACP lawyers. Emerging from his car and carrying NAACP T-shirts that read "Jim Crow Must Go," Evers was struck in the back with a bullet fired from an Enfield 1917 rifle; it went into his house. He staggered 9 meters (30 feet) before collapsing. He was taken to the local hospital in Jackson where he was initially refused entry because of his color, until it was explained who he was; he died in the hospital 50 minutes later.

The driveway where Medgar Evers was shot at 2332 Margaret Walker Alexander Drive.[22]

Mourned nationally, Evers was buried on June 19 in Arlington National Cemetery, where he received full military honors before a crowd of more than 3,000.[14]

On June 21, 1963, Byron De La Beckwith, a fertilizer salesman and member of the White Citizens' Council (and later of the Ku Klux Klan), was arrested for Evers' murder.[23]

District Attorney and future governor Bill Waller prosecuted De La Beckwith.[24] Juries composed solely of white men twice that year deadlocked on De La Beckwith's guilt.

In 1994, 30 years after the two previous trials had failed to reach a verdict, De La Beckwith was brought to trial based on new evidence. Bobby DeLaughter was the prosecutor. During the trial, the body of Evers was exhumed from his grave for an autopsy.[3] De La Beckwith was convicted of murder on February 5, 1994, after having lived as a free man for much of the three decades following the killing (he was imprisoned from 1977 to 1980 for conspiring to murder A. I. Botnick). De La Beckwith appealed unsuccessfully, and died at age 80 in prison in January 2001.


Legacy

Evers's legacy has been kept alive in a variety of ways. Evers was memorialized by leading Mississippi and national authors, both black and white: Eudora Welty, James Baldwin, Margaret Walker and Anne Moody.[25] In 1963, he was awarded the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP.[26] In 1969, Medgar Evers College was established in Brooklyn, New York as part of the City University of New York. Evers's widow, Myrlie Evers co-wrote the book For Us, the Living with William Peters in 1967. In 1983, a movie was made based on the book. Celebrating Evers's life and career, it starred Howard Rollins, Jr. and Irene Cara as Medgar and Myrlie Evers, airing on PBS. The film won the Writers Guild of America award for Best Adapted Drama.[27] On June 28, 1992, the city of Jackson, Mississippi erected a statue in honor of Evers. All of Delta Drive (part of U.S. Highway 49) in Jackson was renamed in Evers' honor. In December 2004, the Jackson City Council changed the name of the city's airport to "Jackson-Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport" (Jackson-Evers International Airport) in honor of him.[28]

Statue at Medgar Evers Boulevard Library in Jackson, Mississippi.

On the 40-year anniversary of Evers' assassination, hundreds of civil rights veterans, government officials, and students from across the country gathered around his grave site at Arlington National Cemetery to celebrate his life and legacy. Barry Bradford and three students—Sharmistha Dev, Jajah Wu and Debra Siegel, formerly of Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois—planned and hosted the commemoration in his honor.[31]Evers was the subject of the students' research project.[32]

In October 2009, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, a former Mississippi governor, announced that USNS Medgar Evers (T-AKE-13), a Lewis and Clark-class dry cargo ship, would be named in the activist's honor.[33] The ship was christened by Myrlie Evers-Williams on November 12, 2011.[34]

In June of 2013, a statue of Evers was erected at his alma mater, Alcorn State University, to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of his death.[35] Alumni and guests from around the world gathered to recognize his contributions to American society.

Evers was further honored in a tribute at Arlington National Cemetery on the 50th anniversary of his death.[36] Former President Bill Clinton, Attorney General Eric Holder, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, Senator Roger Wicker and NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous all spoke commemorating Evers.[37][38] Evers' widow, Myrlie Evers-Williams, who also honored her late husband, spoke on his contributions to the advancement of civilrights:[39]
"Medgar was a man who never wanted aberration, who never wanted to be in the limelight. He was a man who saw a job that needed to be done and he answered the call and the fight for freedom, dignity and justice not just for his people but all people."

In popular culture

The murder and subsequent trials caused an uproar. Musician Bob Dylan wrote his 1963 song "Only a Pawn in Their Game" about the assassination.[40] Nina Simone wrote and sang "Mississippi Goddam" about the Evers case and Phil Ochs wrote the songs "Another Country" and "Too Many Martyrs" (also titled "The Ballad Of Medgar Evers") in response to the killing, with Matthew Jones and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Freedom Singers also recording the latter song.[40] Eudora Welty's short story "Where Is the Voice ComingFrom", in which the speaker is the imagined assassin of Medgar Evers, was published in The New Yorker in 1963.[41]

Evers' story inspired a 1991 episode of the NBC TV series In the Heat of the Night, entitled "Sweet, Sweet Blues", written by author William James Royce. The story tells of a murder of a young black man and the elderly white man, played by actor James Best, who seems to have gotten away with the 40-year-old murder. (The TV episode preceded by several years the trial that convicted Beckwith.) In the Heat of the Night won its first NAACP Image Award for Best Dramatic Series that season.[42]

The 1996 film Ghosts of Mississippi, directed by Rob Reiner, tells the story of the 1994 retrial of Beckwith, in which prosecutor DeLaughter of the Hinds County District Attorney's office secured a conviction in state court. Beckwith and DeLaughter were played by James Woods and Alec Baldwin, respectively; Whoopi Goldberg played Myrlie Evers. Evers was portrayed by James Pickens, Jr.. The film was based on a book of the same name.[43][44]

Robert DeLaughter wrote a first-person narrative article entitled "Mississippi Justice" published in Reader's Digest, and a book, Never Too Late: A Prosecutor's Story of Justice in the Medgar Evers Case (2001), based on his experiences.[45]
 
Percy Green, race traitor This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (June 2009)

Percy Greene was born on September 7, 1897 in Jackson, Mississippi. He was one of twelve children born to George Washington Green and Sarah Stone. At the age of 17, Greene joined the army. Greene studied law under black attorney-physician Sidney D. Redmond and attended Jackson State University. He is in the Jackson State University Hall of Fame for his football talent. Greene was denied a career as a lawyer because the State bar refused to recognize his high exam scores[citation needed]. His other early jobs included mail carrier for the U.S. Postal Service, magazine salesman with Tuskegee Institute, and the Civilian Conservation Corps. On June 16, 1921, Greene married Frances Lee Reed. The couple had two children: Frances Lorraine and Gwendolyn Louise.

In 1938 Percy Greene started the Jackson Advocate newspaper, now Mississippi's oldest black-owned newspaper.[1] Greene stood for equal rights, justice and opportunities for all. He talked about the Mississippi poll tax and the intimidation blacks suffered at the polls. He spoke all over Mississippi and was recognized in the Pittsburgh Courier for being on their "Top Ten Honor Roll" two years in a row. Eventually he began speaking in Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington D.C.

President Harry S. Truman, after hearing about Greene’s speech, called the Jackson Advocate office and asked what Percy needed in Mississippi and how he could help. Greene said "We need the vote Mr. President. We need the vote…without intimidation, or poll tax... we need the right to vote and the protection of the federal government." The following year, 1948, Percy Green was photographed as he voted for the first time. By 1948, the Advocate circulated 3,000 papers and rose to 10,000 in 1973. Percy Greene died on April 16, 1977. However what he will always be remembered or branded is a race traitor to his own community, his involvement with the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission. This organization along with such despicable people like Greene was responsible for the killing of 3 Americans civil rights workers. Greene was a willing participants in doing what it takes to help the rights of the black community to stay as the status quo.


=====================


He spoke all over Mississippi and was recognized in the Pittsburgh Courier for being on their "Top Ten Honor Roll" two years in a row. Eventually he began speaking in Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington D.C.President Harry S. Truman, after hearing about Greene’s speech, called the Jackson Advocate office and asked what Percy needed in Mississippi and how he could help.

And then along came Medgar Evers, trying to "steal" his thunder, he thought, and supplant him as the "Voice of the Negro."
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P.S.
The Wikipedia article is incorrect in saying Green was responsible for the deaths of the 3 civil rights workers, Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner. Their blood is on the hands of another race traitor to be named and discussed. Green's reports to the MSC concerned the activities of his fellow Mississippian, Medgar Evers (the documentary shows the reports).
 
The NEW Mississippi spy and race traitor: The black detective

In 1960, the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission under their new governor, Ross Barnett, doubled their white agents when despite Draconian laws and government terrorism, civil rights activists marched and protested, Southern police forces attacked, and in an orgy of resistance and violence, the South erupted. Concluding they needed more black spies and infiltrators, the commission turned to private detective agencies, hiring 5 or 6 with both white and black investigators. One report with "blacked out" spaces taken from the MSC files stated:

"June 1964
....informant.... spoke to several members of NAACP...."

The black detective became the new model of spy for the segregation by any means necessary MSC. Because they paid the agencies, rather than the detectives, it was difficult to impossible to pinpoint which black detective infiltrated what organization.

Horace H. Harned, Jr. - member, MSC, (old wrinkly, slow mumbling, half-dead white bastard) about the increase in white investigators and black infiltrators: "The Sovereignty Commission was trying to keep up with the invasion from the North... and we pretty well did," he added with a malignant grin.

Lawrence Guyot, .R. activist, says the MSC tapped their phones, as well as infiltrated their meetings - and even if they didn't know who or how, they knew it was happening. Opened in 1998 through a court decree, the MSC files contained transcripts of speeches he and other activists had stood up in meetings and made extemporaneously, off-the-cuff and in the heat of the moment. 160,000 pages of Spy reports were found stored in MSC files. Many detailed Medgar Evers movements; as many tracked Dr. King's movements in Mississippi, containing advance information on each of his travels, where he was going, which routes he was taking, and which strategies to use to undercut him.

NOTE: Because the C.R. activists knew they were infiltrated (even if they didn't know by whom), they began funneling disinformation to the MSC through the (unknown) spies. Those blacks that they KNEW were spies, they would give bad info up front.... thus, contrary to the old bastard, Harnard, the malignant MSC really didn't know as much as they thought they did.

The black spies of the MSC didn't track and inform on just the leaders; they informed on every little cog in the Civil Rights wheel. Ralph Eubanks' parents schooled black Mississippians on how to pass the Literacy Test - which only black citizens had to take and pass; any illiterate white could vote. Once their black 'pupils' passed the test and were registered to vote, the Eubanks faced another stumbling block in their quest for the civil right to vote for black Mississippians - the Poll Tax. Again, only blacks were required to PAY to vote. To surmount this hurdle, the Eubanks collected money to pay their impoverished people's "Tax." The Eubanks weren't on the front lines, grabbing newspaper headlines, just ordinary people doing their small part to help their people.

The MSC had a file on them.

The mission of Mississippi State government was to preserve segregation, and was rooted in white supremacy. The MSC supplied information to the state police and county sheriff departments, the latter thoroughly infiltrated by the KKK which had made a huge resurgence in bile and membership during the C.R. era. They thoroughly terrorized Mississippians, both black and white, with their violence. Former Governor Winter (Mississippi) said that everyone was intimidated by the KKK and their activities. He went on to say it was a time of almost unbelievable thought control and led to some of the most "unfortunate" (his word, not mine!) events in the history of the C.R. Movement.

FREEDOM SUMMER (1964)
Freedom Summer was about getting Mississippi blacks registered to vote. About 1,000 C.R. workers came from the North, black and white, to make it a reality.

White Mississippians took the push to register black people to vote as a declaration of war. Jackson police bought tanks with 9 machine gun positions. They constructed "cage trucks" to hold demonstrators - literally cages, open to the elements, on wheels. They bought in Searchlight trucks, capable of lighting 3 city blocks each, the dreaded German Shepard dogs and horses for mounted policemen. Concentration camps capable of holding 10,000 people, most open to the elements, were erected to hold demonstrators, as well.

(NOTE: Although the documentary film doesn't say so, southern Police Departments also stock-piled on cattle prods, electrified whips they used to beat activists in the cages on wheels. Many former activists, to this day, suffer with back and other problems from the bolts of electricity shot through their bodies from being hit with "live" cattle prods.)

With their life styles and jobs on the line (1/2 of the citizens of Mississippi were black), as well as segregation of the races that protected them, white Mississippi officials went on the offensive. They passed laws outlawing picketing, economic boycotting and demonstrating as well as censorship laws restricting what information one could print and/or distribute. The 'pits' of the fascist state were laws to dampen complaints to the federal government, asking for help! Old bastard summed it up: "We were not intimidated. When you get intimidated, you can't control anything."


Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney.... and Agent X and the NAACP

Mickey Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, both 21 years old in 1964, were upper class Jewish** activists from New York. James Earl Chaney was a 21 year old black man native to Mississippi.
**(I mention "Jewish" because almost all the whites active in the Civil Rights Movement were Jews. While no one "counted" them, most blacks who were in Mississippi during Freedom Summer say the whites there were mainly Jewish. I saw another documentary where a Jewish female activist claimed that upwards of 90% of the whites involved in the Civil Rights Movement were Jews.)

Schwerner and Goodman trained for Freedom Summer in Ohio along with 300 college students, mostly whites, if they volunteered to go to Mississippi to help register black Mississippians to vote. They were warned that if they decided to go, that they could expect to be beaten, jailed or killed. Along with James Chaney, the two men were murdered in performance of their noble undertaking.

At the same time Schwerner was in Ohio, a black spy for the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission (who was fronting as an activist) was departing for the training camp in Ohio. One of his reports to the MSC begins:
"I is departing this date for Oxford, Ohio.... reports tp a blind P.O. Box here in Jackson..."

He sent the MSC a report on Mickey Schwerner, describing him: brown hair, brown eyes, weight 175 pds, height 5'8", his occupation (social worker), name of his employer, address in Meridian MS AND his phone number. The MSC passed that information on to the Meridian PD where it was later determined that more than half the force were Klansmen.

Reminiscing, a black Mississippi woman described Mickey Schwerner as funny - always with a smile on his face. Everyone liked him. She described Chaney as a native of Meridian, MS who was was always anxious to "do something" about black Mississippi plight; called him JE for James Earl (Chaney). Goodman she described as like a little kid, excited to come South (he was murdered on his first day in Mississippi).

The MSC funneled information about the 3 to the Philadelphia, Mississippi Police Department/Klan - where, when, who and why - on the day the 3 men were investigating a church fire bombing (black churches, from whence historically 99% of ALL rebellions, uprisings, etc. since black people were first brought in chains to America, were formulated, were being burned all across the South during this time period). Possessing their names and a detailed description of the 3 men, including their license plates (courtesy of the black detective), the sheriff picked them up, threw them into jail, released them (he said) and then.... they disappeared, their whereabouts unknown for weeks despite a massive manhunt.

John Lewis (then activist, now congressman who was recently called the N-word by NORTHERN whites when Obama was elected POTUS): "We know that 3 men disappeared sometime ago. And we know what happens to Civil Rights workers. We know what happens to Negroes in MS when they disappear. Sometime you find them in rivers, sometime you find them hanging from trees and sometime you don't find them."

The governor, Ross Barnett (to whom the MSC reported), said Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner's disappearance was "all a hoax," that they were "probably down in Cuba smoking cigars with Castro."

Searchers pulled their car from a river and later, found the 3 men dead and buried under a dam. It was the FBI who found their burial place through one of THEIR informants, 44 days after their disappearance. Also found was a hand-drawn map with the 3 men's names and where their bodies were located, buried under the earthen dam where they were found. The map was found in the MSC files.

With their deaths, the whole world truly started watching the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. Or, as Mickey Schwerner's wife, Rita, also a member of the Freedom Summer project, cried angrily (paraphrasing): "If Goodman and Schwerner were black and not white, the deaths of the Civil Rights workers wouldn't have caused a ripple in world opinion!"

One other thing: The FBI offered a $1 million reward so somebody ratted out the sheriff and 6 members of the Klan (not one dime for all the unidentified black bodies dredged from the river with the car). Turns out the sheriff took them on a lonely country road with the 6 klansmen following in another car. The sheriff stopped, ordered the 3 men out of the car. The 2 white men, Schwerner and Goodman, were shot and killed. Chaney, the black man, was gang-beaten with chains before he was fatally shot (may he rest in peace).

Coincidentally, the search parties dragged countless dead black bodies in various stages of decomposition from the river they dredged looking for the 3 Civil Rights workers. It was as John Lewis noted: "Negroes disappear" in Mississippi, and "sometime(s) you don't find them."

Agent X
In addition to the hand-drawn map with Goodman, Chaney and Schwerner's names and where they were buried in the MSC files, was a report from an Agent X describing the car they were driving in, license plates, what the "Negro" was wearing, i.e., 'a Tougaloo college sweater" and to whom the car was registered.

While Agent X who worked out of Canton, MS, was never "officially" IDed, one of the former activists went through the files of the MSC, determined to uncover the race traitor who had spied on him and his fellow activists. Looking at reports of the strategy meetings he had personally attended, he asked himself: "Who was at the meetings that were compromised? Who was there when we were talking about these things that ended up in the files of the MSC?" Connecting the dots, the line led to one man, R.L. Bolden.

RL Bolden, an investigator for the Day Detective Agency, now an old geezer, lives in a lovely, middle-class home with a manicured lawn. Looking at the beautifully maintained lawn and orderly, attractive house, I was reminded of something a brutha who was in the thick of things in the Civil Rights Movement once told me about Uncle Toms and infiltrators. He called them white people's "dogs. And," he added ominously, "they're some well-fed dogs."

Bolden said they claimed he was a spy and that it was a lie. Although he didn't look it, he maintained that he was "shocked" by the accusation. While maintaining his innocence, he did, however, admit (with a small, tight smile and a nod of his old head) that the detective agency he worked for "might" have been passing on information to the MSC.

He can say what he will BUT - a report to the MSC:

"I is (notice the "I is" keeps popping up in these reports) been elected assistant to the Director of the Direct Action Committee.... and is second in command...."

So was Bolden.

One former activist said he knew RL very well, and that he rose through the ranks to become Vice President of the Mississippi NAACP. After a black (now) state senator, former activist, digging through files and seeing reports given about certain, specific meetings, and him recollecting who was at the meetings, he began to notice that the names of everyone who attended the various meetings were recorded.... except for one name, presumably that of the person doing the recording. While he remembered that R.L. Bolden was at EACH meeting, Bolden's name never appeared on any of the reports. It turned out to be a pattern. Meetings that were compromised ALWAYS left out the name of R.L. Bolden as one of the participants - meetings that the state senator remembered R.L. attending. The inescapable conclusion was that RL was the spy, the double agent, the '***** in the woodpile' submitting the reports to the MSC.

If R.L. Bolden (the "if" is the only reason I don't brand him race traitor) was Agent X, it was he, that grandfatherly-looking, old black man in the documentary whose hands are stained with the blood of Mickey Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman.

One interesting footnote (not in the documentary) that I uncovered in my googling on the case. It's rather horrible. I started this section by saying Agent X (R.L. Bolden?) began tracking Mickey Schwerner while he was posing as a black Mississippi activist and Schwerner was a Freedom Summer recruit in Ohio. Whereas Chaney and Goodman were new to the game, mere, if important, cogs in the wheel, Schwerner was the only white activist to be placed in a leadership position, he and his wife, Rita, running a CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) field office in Meridian, MS. In addition to assisting black would-be voters, the engaging Schwerner was knocking on doors in Meridian's white communities attempting to enlist their help and "win their hearts and minds" for the cause. Reports have surfaced that indicate the MSC targeted Schwerner. Fate, or perhaps just plain bad luck, had Goodman and Chaney with him when the Sheriff picked them up.
 

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