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Spies of Mississippi: The True Story of the Spy Network that Tried to Destroy the Civil Rights Movement
Rick Bowers

National Kids Geographic


The Spies of Mississippi is a compelling story of how state spies tried to block voting rights for African Americans during the Civil Rights era. This book sheds new light on one of the most momentous periods in American history.Author Rick Bowers has combed through primary-source materials and interviewed surviving activists named in once-secret files, as well as the writings and oral histories of Mississippi civil rights leaders. Readers get first-hand accounts of how neighbors spied on neighbors, teachers spied on students, ministers spied on church-goers, and spies even spied on spies.The Spies of Mississippi will inspire readers with the stories of the brave citizens who overcame the forces of white supremacy to usher in a new era of hope and freedom—an age that has recently culminated in the election of Barack Obama













Copyright © 2010 Richard J. Bowers.

All rights reserved. Reproduction of the whole or any part of the contents without written permission from the publisher is prohibited.






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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bowers, Rick, 1952-

The spies of Mississippi : the true story of the spy network that tried to destroy the civil rights movement / by Rick Bowers. – 1st ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-4263-0595-5 (hardcover : alk. paper) – ISBN 978-1-4263-0596-2 (library binding : alk. paper)

eBook ISBN: 978-1-4263-0736-2

1. Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission–History. 2. African Americans–Civil rights–Mississippi–History–20th century. 3. African Americans–Segregation–Mississippi–History–20th century. 4. States’ rights (American politics)–History–20th century. 5. Mississippi–Politics and government–1951-6. Mississippi–Race relations. 7. Civil rights movements–Mississippi–History–20th century. I. Title.

E185.93.M6B69 2010

323.1196’0730762–dc22

2009018944

v3.1

Version: 2017-07-05




TABLE OF CONTENTS


Cover (#uf3386499-329c-580e-bf54-beaba4e59e8d)

Title Page (#u4264ca5b-a3c5-5869-be2f-0d2c3591b4bb)

Copyright (#u43970bae-8077-5c0d-a09e-d3163a4f3712)

Dedication (#udde97ef9-0183-5863-a9d4-d203cb9fa43b)

Acknowledgments (#u6fea66a9-19fc-5929-a1a5-aecd967ac990)

Foreword (#ua4d4df11-473a-5411-926b-0a1a2aed5589)

Prologue (#ua40aed85-c397-5c1d-87a6-bd2ffd3bac95)

1 The Genesis (#u7b9a86f1-a5d4-5f2b-99d8-0193bd212519)

2 Growing Outrage, Growing Backlash (#uc926427c-452d-5739-b581-fb1a1e92a5ed)

3 The “Bible” (#ubd53b8b7-8292-586e-b14f-bf4e44580444)

4 The Pipeline (#u9753e5c2-c740-5bbd-9edf-19090c18826b)

5 The Delta Blues (#u77a10d72-4af8-5009-a7d8-02c5b9170365)

6 Death of a Dream (#u1cbb8f8f-0f5c-5e84-a60d-74b883d1b724)

7 The Savior of Segregation (#litres_trial_promo)

8 The Clandestine War (#litres_trial_promo)

9 Never, Never Land (#litres_trial_promo)

10 Overflowing the Jails (#litres_trial_promo)

Photo Inserts

11 The Battle for Ole Miss (#litres_trial_promo)

12 In the Dead of the Night (#litres_trial_promo)

13 The Secret Benefactor (#litres_trial_promo)

14 Agent X (#litres_trial_promo)

15 Marked Men (#litres_trial_promo)

16 The Magnolia Curtain (#litres_trial_promo)

17 “Destroy This Directive” (#litres_trial_promo)

What Happened Next (#litres_trial_promo)

Documents (#litres_trial_promo)

Bibliography (#litres_trial_promo)

Quote Sources (#litres_trial_promo)

Photo Credits (#litres_trial_promo)


With profound love and joy to Wynn, Neva, and Helen




ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


I wish to thank my wife, Wynn, for her constant support and dedication to this endeavor. The compelling images in this book are due to her expert and relentless research. Special thanks to National Geographic editor Nancy Feresten, who immediately recognized the power of the concept and steadfastly guided the progress of the work. A special appreciation to the staff at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, who were always there to aid in the search for information and to open new pathways to insight and understanding. In fact, throughout the state, archivists, librarians, and historians openly shared important pieces of the civil rights story under their purview. Special thanks to friends who listened to the stories, provided encouragement, and even helped with early ideas and edits. Naturally, I offer a heartfelt thanks to the civil rights pioneers who shared their memories with me. It was a profound honor to hear their recollections of the past and to witness their continuing quest for justice.




FOREWORD


You are about to encounter the spies and counterspies, agents and double agents, informants and infiltrators of the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission—the secret, state-funded spy program formed to stop the march toward equality and justice in the 1950s and 1960s. You will also encounter dedicated civil rights workers and fearless student activists, truth-telling journalists and justice-seeking lawyers who dared to challenge the status quo imposed by the seemingly all-powerful state. The United States was founded on the ideals of equal opportunity for all—white and black, Hispanic and Asian, gay and straight, old and young. Achieving these ideals demands constant vigilance to protect our civil liberties against unwarranted government intrusion in our private lives. Standing on the shoulders of those who came before, we are called upon to defend—and to extend—those essential civil and human rights.

Wade Henderson

President and CEO,

Leadership Conference on Civil Rights




PROLOGUE


Twelve of the most powerful men in the state controlled a secretive network of spies and informants. A cadre of covert operatives used code names like Agent X, Agent Y, and Agent Zero. Neighbors spied on neighbors. Teachers spied on students. Ministers spied on churchgoers. Spies spied on spies. This is not the description of a Cold War–era secret police force or a futuristic sci-fi dictatorship. This government-run spy network infiltrated the lives of private citizens right here in the United States and not too long ago—in the state of Mississippi during the height of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission operated as a clandestine investigative arm of the state government for more than a decade. It compiled secret files on more than 87,000 private citizens and organizations. Staffed by a team of professional agents and funded by taxpayers, the commission had a fundamental mission: to save segregation at all costs. In the process, its agents carried out the most extensive state spying program in U.S. history.

How do we know all this is true? The Commission itself tells us. The 134,000 pages and 87,000 names in its once-secret investigative file tell the story of its clandestine programs, its network of neighborhood informants, its brutal behind-the-scenes maneuvering, and its intervention in many of the most significant events of the civil rights era. In their own words, the agents reveal their tactics for infiltrating civil rights groups, forcing liberal college professors out of their jobs, collaborating with white racist organizations, and rewarding black leaders for supporting segregation.

The extensive investigative file does not tell the whole story, however. For this book, I’ve filled out the story with oral histories, personal memoirs, historical studies, academic dissertations, government documents, and newspaper and magazine articles from the era. In addition, I’ve traveled Mississippi—from the cotton fields in the Mississippi River Delta to the beach towns on the Gulf Coast to the capital of Jackson—interviewing people connected to the story. I’ve also uncovered surveillance documents and photographs, including a hand-drawn map showing the burial site of three murdered civil rights workers and photos of student protesters with red numbers scrawled next to their faces. Those numbers targeted the “subversives” for further investigation.

Despite the tracks left behind by the anti–civil rights spies and the excellent research and writing on the subject in Mississippi, the story remains largely unknown to the general public. It is usually relegated to a footnote in the history of the civil rights movement.

No longer.

This is how it happened.







THE GENESIS


At noon sharp on a bright, 43-degree day in January 1956, J. P. Coleman placed his right hand on his mother’s Bible and took the oath to become the 51st governor of Mississippi. The 6-foot, 2-inch gentleman farmer, lawyer, and Civil War historian cast an impressive figure as he stood at the podium preparing to deliver his inaugural address. Coleman looked out over the 3,000 people gathered in the public square in the state capital of Jackson. Virtually all the faces looking back at him were white.

A segregationist and skilled public speaker, Coleman launched into his inaugural address, vowing to “maintain the continued separation of the white and Negro races.” But aware that tensions between whites and blacks were threatening to flare into violence in a number of cities and towns across the state, Coleman also warned his audience—including both chambers of the state legislature and the state supreme court—that preserving segregation was “no task for the amateur or the hothead.” When it came to the tense relationship between whites and blacks in Mississippi, Coleman wanted “peace and quiet.” In Mississippi in 1956, that made him a moderate.

Once settled in to the governor’s mansion, Coleman waded through a stream of bills coming to his desk from the state legislature, which was fixated on shoring up the walls of segregation. House Bill 880 caught his eye. It called for the creation of the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, a special agency that would preserve the state’s “sovereignty”—that is, its right to govern itself without undue interference from the federal government or private pressure groups. The lawmakers behind the bill had made it clear that sovereignty was really just a high-minded code word for segregation—the official state policy of keeping the races separate and keeping whites in a position of power over blacks. The Commission would be granted extraordinary powers, including the power to investigate private citizens and organizations, to maintain secret files, to force witnesses to testify, and even to make arrests.

From a legal standpoint, Coleman worried that such a potent and secretive investigative agency could trample on the rights of private citizens. From a political standpoint, he knew that those powerful lawmakers would not back down until the bill was signed into law. And from a practical standpoint, he had to admit that having his own operatives to keep an eye on civil rights “agitators” could help to maintain his coveted racial peace and quiet. As the new governor signed the bill, he vowed to contain the agency’s power by surrounding it with moderates like himself, instead of the outspoken, racist politicians and civic leaders he called “fire-eaters.” With the stroke of his pen, the Commission was born. Governor Coleman, despite his reluctance, became the overseer of the state’s new segregation watchdogs.







GROWING OUTRAGE, GROWING BACKLASH


The segregation watchdogs would have plenty to keep an eye on. From Gulfport to Greenville, civil rights activists had stepped up their boycotts, marches, prayer vigils, and demonstrations against segregation and discrimination, inequality and injustice. The catalyst had been the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, which barred segregation in public schools and required states to integrate schools “with all deliberate speed.” The ruling prompted more and more opponents of segregation to join the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), an interracial organization formed in 1909 to advocate for equal rights for African Americans. Now the NAACP was setting up local chapters in cities and towns throughout Mississippi—and the rest of the country—to push for integration.

The growing outrage of blacks was greeted with a growing backlash from many whites. The more extreme opponents of integration called for a campaign of “massive resistance” by white community leaders and ordinary citizens. City leaders barred demonstrations; county sheriffs began jailing activists on trumped-up charges; the Ku Klux Klan awoke from a long slumber with cross burnings, beatings, and even murder.

Thousands of people were joining the newly formed White Citizens’ Council, a self-described civic organization with a stated mission of defending segregation by legal means—and without violence. The movement was inspired by Mississippi Circuit Court Judge Thomas Pickens Brady, who published a handbook entitled Black Monday, which denounced the 1954 Supreme Court ruling, introduced a racist philosophy, and compared black people to cockroaches and chimpanzees. Brady called for the disbandment of the NAACP and proposed radical alternatives to integrated schools, including the abolition of all public schools and even the creation of a separate state for Negroes.

By the time Governor Coleman took office, the state was studded with White Citizens’ Council chapters. Their leaders saturated their community newspapers with pro-segregation messages, advocated for tougher segregation ordinances, supported segregationist political candidates, and fiercely denounced the NAACP by calling it the National Association for the Agitation of Colored People. The Council’s most effective weapon was the economic advantage that middle- and upper-class whites held over the majority of blacks. Council leaders got suspected civil rights sympathizers fired from their jobs, turned down for credit, forced out of business, or evicted from their homes. Behind the scenes, more than a few Council leaders resorted to threats, intimidation, and violence, as they worked hand in hand with the Klan. Critics of the White Citizens’ Council—noting that most of its leaders were respected white businessmen dressed in suits and ties rather than hoods and robes—dubbed the organization the “Country Club Klan.” Liberal journalist Hodding Carter, editor of the crusading Delta Democrat Times, warned that the most extreme white racists would take control of the council. “When the pot boils,” Carter said, “the scum rises to the top.”

Most black Mississippians were not buying segregation, even if they had to keep their views to low whispers to avoid persecution. Many others were voting with their feet by moving north in search of better jobs and more tolerance. Still others, convinced that the entrenched white political class would never give up power, chose to make the best of it in a black-and-white world. Those few subservient blacks who played up to white authority figures in exchange for preferential treatment were branded Uncle Toms, a term drawn from a fictional character in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The term, a badge of shame in the black community, suggested that the person was selling out his or her own people.

The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission was counting on it.







THE “BIBLE”


As the tension between the races simmered, Governor Coleman assumed the chairmanship of the board that would oversee the Sovereignty Commission. The 12 board members—including the powerful president of the Mississippi Senate, the speaker of the Mississippi House, and the state attorney general—would provide political cover for the agency’s hidden operations. Once the board was in place, Coleman set up a propaganda unit to wage a war of words against the NAACP. The unit would produce and distribute pro-segregation messages, ultimately compiling a package of press releases, films, speeches, and testimonials that would become known as the “Bible.”

Coleman appointed his former campaign publicity chief Hal DeCell to head up the unit. DeCell, editor of the weekly Deer Creek Pilot in the tiny delta town of Rolling Fork, had lobbied for a big public relations job with the state. He promised to repute the “vicious falsehoods” and “slanderous misrepresentation” coming from “antagonistic pressure groups,” the federal government, and the “poisoned pens” of the elite Yankee press. As public relations chief, DeCell began crafting the story line that segregation was good for both whites and blacks, and that most “Negroes” in the Magnolia State actually preferred it. He started sending pro-segregation editorials to newspapers across the country, developing a pro-segregation film, and distributing pamphlets that painted a glowing portrait of race relations in the state. DeCell escorted northern newspaper editors on tours of the Mississippi River and excursions to the tourist towns on the Gulf Coast in an effort to show that whites and blacks lived and worked in carefully controlled harmony in segregated Mississippi.

As would be expected, DeCell’s public relations package did not mention the state’s long history of maintaining white dominance over blacks, which dated to the earliest days of slavery. At that time the state established rigid “slave codes” that defined African Americans as property, dictated the conditions of their captivity, and prescribed brutal punishments for the slightest infractions. Even after the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, the ruling class in Mississippi—and throughout the South—retained power by establishing new laws, customs, and punishments that bore a striking resemblance to the old slave codes.

The new “black codes” restricted freedoms of speech, travel, voting, owning land, and choosing an occupation. White supremacy—the concept that white people are naturally superior to blacks—was written into law, taught in schools, praised in churches, and reinforced in the media. The laws and customs that propped up white power were commonly referred to as Jim Crow, after an old, crippled black character portrayed by white minstrel show performers. With their faces blackened by charcoal or burned cork, the minstrel showmen danced a ridiculous jig and sang a mocking song titled “Jump Jim Crow,” inadvertently putting a name to the degrading conditions that dominated the lives of African Americans.

The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission had a plan to preserve Jim Crow. Its agents were going undercover.







THE PIPELINE


As the Commission’s propaganda machine ground out its self-serving distortions, Coleman decided to add to its arsenal. He began setting up a secret investigative unit that would be patterned after the FBI and U.S. military intelligence agencies during wartime, “seeking out intelligence information about the enemy and what the enemy proposed to do.” Specifically, Coleman wanted a small team of investigators to infiltrate the NAACP and to keep him apprised of its plans to form new chapters, to organize protest demonstrations, to boycott businesses, and to file lawsuits.

The governor began hiring investigators and assigned them to develop a network of paid and unpaid informants to serve as the Commission’s “eyes and ears” in communities statewide. The agents found willing collaborators in white civic leaders, businessmen, sheriffs, deputies, judges, and ministers. Determined to stop integration, the informants began calling the Commission’s office in the New State Capitol Building in Jackson. They reported conversations overheard between “Negro agitators,” rumors of upcoming protest actions, and the names and descriptions of suspected NAACP leaders in their midst. The Commission agents dubbed this network of neighborhood spies the “pipeline.”

Building the white information pipeline was easy compared to the task of recruiting blacks to inform on other blacks. But as one Commission report would conclude, “This problem will never be solved without the help of the Negroes in the state of Mississippi.” Seeking “a large number of fine, level-headed Negro citizens actively opposed to the NAACP,” the agents began quietly soliciting conservative black community leaders to serve as confidential informants. They offered payments of $10 to $500 per assignment to keep tabs on suspicious neighbors or to join the NAACP and send its meeting notes, plans, and member lists to handlers at the Commission.

At first, most black informants were small-time operators, but in spring 1957, agents began cozying up to Percy Greene, editor and publisher of the Jackson Advocate, the black newspaper with the largest circulation in the state. The word was that the outspoken, cigar-chomping newspaperman was uneasy with the NAACP’s demands for immediate school integration and felt out of step with its younger, more opinionated leaders. In addition, Greene needed cash to shore up his financially strapped weekly newspaper and wasn’t choosy about his sources of income. The big-talking editor liked to brag that he’d take money from the devil if it meant selling more papers.

After a series of meetings with publicity chief DeCell, Greene made good on his boast and formed a devil’s bargain with the Commission. He would publish its propaganda in his newspaper and keep tabs on the NAACP. The Commission would cover his travel expenses to out-of-state meetings and funnel money to him under the guise of subscriptions, advertising, and printing jobs.

Greene hammered the NAACP in his columns and editorials, condemning its “vindictive speeches” against “responsible white people” and began funneling information to the Commission. And he made a handsome side income. In 1958 alone, Greene received $3,200 from the Commission—more than $31,000 in today’s money.

Shortly after wooing and winning Greene, the spies scored an even bigger prize. Reverend Henry Harrison Humes—one of the most influential African-American ministers in the state—agreed to serve as a confidential informant. Rev. H. H. Humes was the longtime pastor of New Hope Baptist Church in Greenville, editor of the weekly Delta Leader, and president of the 387,000-member Baptist State Convention, the largest black Baptist organization in Mississippi. Now he was riding a circuit of black churches across the Mississippi River Delta and building a loyal following through his powerful oratory and moral decrees. Humes had significant influence over ordinary churchgoers, a powerful voice in church affairs, and plenty of contacts within the NAACP.

A conservative black preacher supporting segregation was rare but not completely unheard of in Mississippi at that time. White community leaders often bestowed special status on “Negro preachers” for keeping politics out of the pulpit and keeping their flocks focused on the rewards of the afterlife rather than the shortcomings of the here and now. Black ministers who toed the line received contributions to their church funds, special relationships with white community leaders, and even a voice in state affairs. Humes was cut from that cloth.

As an informant, Humes proved himself by providing intelligence on NAACP recruitment in his hometown of Greenville. His first check was for a modest $29.76 for “investigations.” A February 11, 1957, memo recommended paying him $150 to spy on other black preachers at an upcoming regional ministerial meeting in Atlanta, because his report “could alert us to local situations.” Now the preacher was in a position to ingratiate himself with the state, to undercut his rivals within the NAACP, and to make serious money.

Humes followed up the initial assignments with such detailed information and enticing leads that his handlers steadily upped his pay. Before long, the minister was receiving a $150 monthly salary and additional payments for special assignments. The 55-year-old preacher became the primary source of anti–civil rights intelligence in the Delta. He provided advance word on NAACP meetings, warnings of visits from out-of-state leaders, whispers of future actions, and the names and addresses of new members and aspiring leaders. Humes was so thorough that he even hired a stenographer to record NAACP meetings word for word. He mailed meticulous reports to the Commission office and frequently drove to Jackson to brief his handlers in person.

Then, in July 1957, everything changed. Greene and Humes were exposed. The Associated Press broke a story stating that two black leaders were pocketing under-the-table payments from a public agency dedicated to preserving segregation. The proof: state-issued checks made out to Greene and Humes from the Sovereignty Commission.

The civil rights community was outraged by the betrayal. NAACP leaders complained that their work to secure equal rights for ordinary people had been jeopardized by a couple of well-heeled Uncle Toms. Grassroots activists grumbled that they were going to jail for the cause while well-to-do community members were on the payroll of the jailers. The leadership of the NAACP fired back at the informants. NAACP executive director Roy Wilkins told a packed crowd of 600 people at the Mount Bethel Baptist Church in Gulfport that Greene and Humes were “quick to get their hands in the till.”

Speaking from the pulpit of the same church in Gulfport, Humes denied the allegations. Addressing hundreds of people packed into the pews, he charged that the NAACP had “fallen into bad hands.” But Humes’s supporters were slow to rally to his defense, and his enemies were quick on the attack. NAACP members circulated a petition calling for his removal as president of the Baptist Convention. A coalition of black preachers issued a statement calling him “unworthy of the fellowship of the ministers of the Protestant denominations in Mississippi.”

Deflated by the attacks and fearful of being exposed again by reporters, Humes cut back on his spying and stopped traveling to Jackson to file reports. Instead he met his handlers at secret locations to plead for their support in clearing his name. He became consumed by the vendetta against him and depressed about his fall from grace.

Then, one night while driving home from a friend’s house, Humes started to feel sick. Concerned that his condition was worsening, he made his way to a segregated medical clinic to be examined. While waiting to be tended to, the minister went into a seizure, suffered a heart attack, and died. The next day Humes’s Commission contact sent a memo to Governor Coleman. It read, “The death of Rev. Humes has cost us one of the most influential Negroes we have had working on our behalf.” Later, the agent drove to the minister’s house in Greenville and, unbeknownst to the grieving family, slipped into Humes’s office “to remove all files dealing with the Sovereignty Commission.”

The exposure of the black informants lifted a curtain on the state’s secret spy network. Now, NAACP leaders were keenly aware of the dangers posed by those curious men in suits who had been jotting down the tag numbers of cars parked outside their meeting places. Civil rights activists began taking steps to protect their confidential documents and calling out suspected snitches in their meetings. For its part, the Commission quickly replaced Humes with one of his followers and added more informants—white and black—to its intelligence pipelines. As for Greene, he weathered the storm and continued informing and publishing propaganda. The two sides were poised for conflict, and there was more controversy bubbling up from the rich, black Mississippi River Delta.







THE DELTA BLUES


The Mississippi River Delta is a study in contrast. The vast stretches of green and white cotton fields are interspersed with eerie, moss-draped cypress swamps. The white-pillared mansions of the plantation elite stand near the huts of the poor dirt farmer. The Delta is home to debutante balls and backroom gambling dens, ramshackle houseboats and majestic paddle wheelers. This sweltering, insect-ridden, and amazingly fertile stretch of bottomland forms, in the words of author James C. Cobb, “the most Southern place on earth.”

Back in the 1860s, hundreds of thousands of slaves worked the vast cotton fields. They were afraid to resist or to run for fear of being whipped, beaten, or sold away from their families. Each day, more black men, women, and children were delivered to the plantations by slave brokers, who purchased their human cargo in the bustling markets of New Orleans and Natchez and marched them in groups of about 30 for hundreds of miles to their oppressive new homes. The seemingly endless supply of slave labor and a ravenous demand for cotton fueled a robust economy dominated by wealthy planters, powerful politicians, and influential businessmen.

The legacy of slavery, the grip of poverty, and widespread illiteracy made it virtually impossible for civil rights workers to organize effectively in the Delta prior to the 1950s. The small cotton-processing towns and thinly populated enclaves seemed destined to be racially segregated and brutally oppressive for African Americans for generations to come. But by the late 1950s, in the hardscrabble river town of Clarksdale, change was in the air. Aaron Henry, president of the Coahoma County Chapter of the NAACP and executive secretary of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership, was organizing the black community. The mild-mannered activist was petitioning the local school board to integrate schools, urging the sheriff to crack down on the harassment of black voters, and demanding that newspaper editors refer to black people in their columns with the courtesy titles of Mr., Mrs., and Miss.

Henry, a registered pharmacist and owner of the Fourth Street Drug Store, had turned his pharmacy into a makeshift community center and citizenship school, where he prepared poor sharecroppers, shopkeepers, and household servants to vote for the first time. Affectionately known in the community as Doc, Henry had a unique ability to work across the racial divide and a talent for forming unlikely alliances.

Henry had grown up in a sharecropping family on the Flowers Brothers Plantation outside Clarksdale. He escaped poverty by joining the army and learned his pharmacy craft at Xavier College in New Orleans. After college, drawn by the lure of the land and a determination to end racial prejudice, he returned home to the Delta. “You know that old Mississippi River has never had an ounce of racial prejudice,” he liked to say. “When it comes to bursting over those levees, it doesn’t stop to ask where the colored section is. It just takes all.”

The Commission spies initially underestimated Henry’s effectiveness. They bragged of duping him into divulging valuable information without even knowing it. But over time, Henry’s relentless organizing and alliance building forced the spies to enhance their surveillance. In early 1958, Commission agent Zach Van Landingham traveled to Clarksdale to meet three men—a judge, a candidate for sheriff, and a leader of the Clarksdale chapter of the White Citizens’ Council. The prominent local leaders told the agent that the pharmacist-turned-organizer was stirring up needless trouble in the black community and laid out a plan to rid themselves of the agitator.

The Council would pressure wholesalers to stop selling supplies to Henry’s drugstore and would press doctors to refuse to write prescriptions for patients who shopped there. The economic squeeze would bankrupt Henry and force him to leave town in search of work. The Council also planned to persuade the superintendent of the Coahoma Country Negro School District to fire Henry’s wife, Nicole, from her teaching job just to make sure the couple had no reason to stay in town. “It is believed that if Henry leaves the area,” Van Landingham reported to his superiors at the Commission, “the NAACP will die.”

The Commission surrounded Henry with black informants, who infiltrated his meetings and intercepted his documents. One report noted that an informant code-named J1 “advised that he had been listening very closely in his church,” and it appeared that NAACP meetings were “not well attended” and that Henry was not “doing very well with his drugstore.” But Henry kept holding meetings, signing up members, registering voters, and speaking out in the press. NAACP membership and black voter registration in the region crept upward.

Then, late in 1958, Henry was elected president of the Mississippi branch of the NAACP, thus becoming one of the most important civil rights leaders in the state. He forged alliances with multiple civil rights organizations, developed relationships with federal authorities, and made friends with sympathetic journalists.

Despite the recognition and the stature, his struggle was really just beginning. After the mayor and Chamber of Commerce of Clarksdale moved to ban blacks from participating in the 1961 Christmas parade, Henry launched a boycott of white-owned businesses, with the slogan, “If we can’t parade downtown, we won’t trade downtown.” The boycott triggered an unprecedented three-year reign of terror against the black community. During that time, Henry’s wife was fired from her teaching job, his drugstore was firebombed, his house was torched, and he was arrested and jailed on false charges. As punishment, he was tied to the back of a garbage truck and forced to load trash in full view of his neighbors. But the attempt to humiliate him backfired on his tormentors. The sight of an unrelenting freedom worker tethered to a trash truck only enhanced his stature in the black community.







DEATH OF A DREAM


Clyde Kennard climbed into his 1958 Mercury station wagon and drove from the black farming hamlet of Eatonville to the stately, all-white campus of Mississippi Southern College. The pristine campus, with its redbrick walkways, white-columned buildings, and shimmering lily ponds, seemed a world away from the family poultry farm that he was running for his ailing mother.

The former U.S. Army paratrooper and University of Chicago political science major was headed to the office of Mississippi Southern president W. D. McCain to get word on his application to enroll at the college. The 30-year-old Kennard was all too aware that he had stirred up a hornet’s nest by applying to an all-white public college, but he had no idea that he was walking into a setup of epic proportions. Commission investigator Zach Van Landingham was waiting for Kennard in President McCain’s office—as was a formal letter of rejection. The police were also watching and waiting with dangerous intentions in mind. The Commission’s role in his undoing would prove that its extraordinary powers were far beyond the point of being contained.

Clyde Kennard was born on June 12, 1927, and raised among the cotton and corn fields of rural Forrest County, Mississippi. At age 12, his family sent him to live with his sister in Chicago so he would have a chance to attend decent schools. In 1945 Kennard enlisted in the army. He graduated from paratrooper school, served as a paratrooper in Korea and Germany, and rose to the rank of sergeant. In 1952, he received an honorable discharge, with the Bronze Star, Korean Service Medal, United Nations Service Medal, and Good Conduct Medal to his credit.

After his discharge, Kennard earned a high school diploma, began taking college courses, and enrolled full-time at the University of Chicago. He completed two years toward a political science degree. Then he got bad news: His stepfather was dying, and his mother couldn’t keep up the farm. In spring 1954, at age 28, Kennard left the University of Chicago for the family chicken farm in Mississippi.

Kennard applied for admission to Mississippi Southern in 1956. His application was denied as incomplete. He reapplied in 1958. It was denied again for alleged irregularities. Then, late in 1959, Kennard applied again. This time he explained his decision—and openly mocked the concept of a segregated society—in an editorial in the Hattiesburg American: “Are we to assume that two sets of hospitals are to be built for two groups of doctors? Are we to build two bridges across the same stream to give equal opportunity to two groups of engineers? Are we to have two courts of law so as to give both groups of lawyers the same chance to demonstrate their skills; two legislatures for our politically inclined; and of course two governors?” Regarding integration and racial cooperation, Kennard concluded, “I would rather meet my God with this creed than with any other yet devised by human society.”

Suddenly, the army veteran, college student, and poultry farmer had captured public attention. The national press jumped on the story of a black military veteran seeking to break the color barrier in higher education in Mississippi. The NAACP offered legal assistance in case Kennard decided to sue the college to gain admission. And the next entry in the Commission’s secret file read in understated fashion, “The Clyde Kennard problem is no longer simply a local concern.”




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