Files Detail Mississippi Attacks on Integration

The state of Mississippi on Tuesday made public the files, secret for four decades, of the now-defunct State Sovereignty Commission, an agency formed to oppose desegregation and long accused of spying on and harassing civil-rights activists in Mississippi from 1956 to 1977.

The files showed that the commission had, indeed, spied on such figures as civil-rights leaders Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King Jr., both later victims of assassins, and James Meredith, the first black student enrolled at the University of Mississippi.

About 124,000 pages of files were opened to the public at the State Archives building, whose front door opens on the monument dedicated “to the Confederate dead of Mississippi.” News conferences about the files’ opening took place right next to the monument.

Among the more poignant moments came when the widow and two of the grown children of Vernon Dahmer, a black civil-rights leader killed in a 1966 Ku Klux Klan firebombing at his Hattiesburg home, appeared at the Archives building. Archives director Hank Holmes presented them with a thick envelope containing copies of the files on Vernon Dahmer.

“I’m not even going to look at the files right away,” said Dahmer’s widow, Ellie. “I’m going right to the district attorney’s office with it.” The family is seeking a new investigation. Although there were some convictions in the case, jurors deadlocked twice in trials of Imperial Wizard Sam Bowers for allegedly ordering the murder, and there have been allegations of jury-tampering.

“Thirty-one years is a long time to wait,” said Dahmer. “But this shows what kind of a state we lived in and what kind of state we live in now. The state has changed. I can go and vote now. My husband gave his life just for other people to be able to vote.”

The voluminous files on Evers, who headed the Mississippi NAACP, revealed that the Sovereignty Commission had planted informants in his organization and at meetings he organized. Jack J. VanLandingham, a commission investigator, sent his superiors repeated written reports on such efforts. One report, dated Nov. 9, 1959, detailed an informant’s account of an NAACP meeting.

“Medgar Evers spoke and called attention to the Negro from Detroit who was killed recently by a policeman at Philadelphia, Miss.,” the report said. “Evers also called attention to the Negro boy killed at Corinth, Miss., by some white youths recently. He further called attention to the Negro who was recently found dead on the highway near Marks, Miss., and whom they claim is a possible lynching victim.”

On June 21, 1963, little more than a week after Evers’ assassination, Sovereignty Commission Director Albert Jones instructed investigator Andy Hopkins: “Check report that Charles Evers [Medgar’s brother] tried to date white woman. Talk to white woman but assure she will be anonymous.”

Another report from VanLandingham quoted an informant as saying that “Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King and other agitators were exploiting the Negroes and are just getting rich doing so.”