The Strange Death of Liberal America

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Recently Mississippi Governor  Haley Barbour, a possible 2012 Presidential contender according to some, found himself in hot water for comments he made about life in his home town of Yazoo City during the Civil Rights Era.  In a conversation about integration in Yazoo Barbour responded as follows during an interview that was part of a Weekly Standard cover story by Andrew Ferguson:

Both Mr. Mott and Mr. Kelly had told me that Yazoo City was perhaps the only municipality in Mississippi that managed to integrate the schools without violence. I asked Haley Barbour why he thought that was so.

“Because the business community wouldn’t stand for it,” he said. “You heard of the Citizens Councils? Up north they think it was like the KKK. Where I come from it was an organization of town leaders. In Yazoo City they passed a resolution that said anybody who started a chapter of the Klan would get their ass run out of town. If you had a job, you’d lose it. If you had a store, they’d see nobody shopped there. We didn’t have a problem with the Klan in Yazoo City.”

After Barbour’s remarks were criticized, he issued the following statement:

When asked why my hometown in Mississippi did not suffer the same racial violence when I was a young man that accompanied other towns’ integration efforts, I accurately said the community leadership wouldn’t tolerate it and helped prevent violence there. My point was my town rejected the Ku Klux Klan, but nobody should construe that to mean I think the town leadership were saints, either. Their vehicle, called the “Citizens Council,” is totally indefensible, as is segregation. It was a difficult and painful era for Mississippi, the rest of the country, and especially African Americans who were persecuted in that time.

On the surface what Barbour says is accurate: Yazoo City did not face the riots and other racial confrontations that occurred in many Southern cities in the era after Brown V. Board. But there is a reason for that and it can be found in the records of the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission (MSSC), a secretive organization that most Americans never heard of, but which had a profound impact on the Civil Rights Movement in that state. Barbour, of course, said nothing about the MSSC, which is a black eye on the state of Mississippi and America.

I wrote extensively about the Commission in the chapter on Fannie Lou Hamer in The Strange Death of Liberal America.  What follows is a brief summary from that chapter to provide some background on the MSSC.

The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission

As records of the Civil Rights Era have come to light, like those of the former Soviet bloc, we can now see that Mississippi was the equivalent of an East European police state. In 1956, in response to the Brown Decision, the Mississippi legislature approved the creation of the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission:

To do and perform any and all acts deemed necessary and proper to protect the sovereignty of the state of Mississippi, and her sister states . . .” from perceived “encroachment thereon by the Federal Government or any branch, department or agency thereof.

Commission records lay under a tombstone of secrecy and protection until a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union opened them for the public. According to the official MSSC web site Commission records were sanitized beginning under Governor Paul B. Johnson who ordered:

Removal of all “incriminating” reports, especially those that indicated the Commission helped county registrars stop African-Americans from registering to vote.

Although the most damaging material was removed from the records, what emerged was shocking enough—ghosts whose wails tell a sordid story. The handwritten records from one county show payments to informers ranging from $25 up to almost $100, with $40 not being uncommon. Check marks march down the page, marking African American informers, sometimes several for the same family.

The MSSC history relates that between 1960 and 1964 the Commission paid a total of $193,500 in monthly grants to the Citizens’ Councils.  It also initiated a speakers bureau to travel the nation presenting the Mississippi perspective and sponsored a film entitled “Message from Mississippi,” which portrayed segregation in glowing terms.

Like Nazi and gulag administrators, the Commission believed nothing was too inconsequential to report. An eerie 1964 memo states:

Rita Schwerner [the wife of slain Civil Rights worker Michael Schwerner] recently purchased a Singer sewing machine in Meridian and had it delivered to 2505 1/2 5th Street in Meridian. ^[MSSC 2‑44‑2‑25‑2‑1‑1]

When the lawsuit and subsequent court decision ordered that the records be made public they were put online, but besides being sanitized, they suffer from a confusing numbering system that makes them difficult to track. The best way to find documents is to enter a name in the name search. Then you have to go through the entries one by one to track down a story.  I find it ironic that the Commission URL is “sovcom,” which sounds like something from the former Soviet Union, which is apt since that Commission bore resemblances to the KGB.

To picture Mississippi at that time you have to be prepared to walk into a fevered nightmare which periodically reasserts itself into our consciousness. Fantastical images and shapes flit in the darkness, and curses and screams come from beyond the edge of safety and sanity. We awake with that uncomfortable feeling of sorting out what is real. One memo captures the atmosphere:

It was pointed out to Shiboh by the writer, that he was going a bit beyond the tutoring in Leland and he was advised to be very careful he did not go beyond the provisions of the law and create a problem which could bring about serious trouble.

What occurred in Yazoo City is yet another chapter in the same shameful history. MSSC records record events that need to see the light, events which Haley Barbour will have a great deal more difficulty explaining than the offhand remark he made about the Klan. In brief what the records show is that Yazoo City had an intimate relationship with the MSSC that was maintained by the Citizen’s Council and local officials. Together they made life for African Americans living in Yazoo City not much different than living in East Berlin on the other side of the Wall.

The Yazoo Citizens’ Council

As Barbour acknowledges, power in Yazoo was held by the Citizens’ Council, which was one of many organized across the South in response to the movement to end segregation.  In many towns the Councils acquired the nicknames “white collar Klan” and “country club Klan” because their membership often consisted of the most prominent citizens.  The Councils looked down on the hoods and burning crosses of the Klan as both ridiculous and counterproductive. The Councils also dissociated themselves from the violence of the Klan, preferring more subtle methods of preserving the color line.  Hodding Carter remarked that they were composed of “the most responsible citizens of each community.”

Still, the ultimate ends of the two groups were similar. According to Neil R. McMillen, whose The Citizens’ Council: Organized Resistance to the Second Reconstruction is the major book-length study of the movement, the Councils favored:

States’ rights and racial integrity. (p. xii)

McMillen notes that Yazoo City was a Council stronghold:

The local Citizens’ Council there was one of the state’s oldest and largest, and as the Yazoo City Herald boasted, “from the very first this community’s outstanding citizens have been members.” In a town of only 11,000 people the organization had grown from only 16 to nearly 1,500 by September, 1955. (p.211)

This paragraph has been quoted by the mainstream press but few of them have honored McMillen by acknowledging his book and his meticulous research into the Citizens Councils. Unfortunately, when he wrote his book McMillen did not have access to the Sovereignty Commission records, nor has the mainstream press sought to explore them.  What follows is an investigative report of MSSC records that leaves little doubt about the police state that existed in Yazoo City with full knowledge of the town’s “leading citizens.”

The Yazoo City Citizens’ Council and the MSSC

The Yazoo City law firm of Henry, Barbour, DeCell and Bridgforth is the oldest law firm in Mississippi–and also one of the most powerful. Besides Governor Barbour it has spawned political figures including current District Court Judge William Barbour and former State Senator Herman DeCell.  A picture on the firm’s web site symbolically captures this heritage, showing the entrance to its offices as a Southern-style brick building that looks as though it predates the Civil War with its wrought iron fence, massive six-paneled weathered door and an inconspicuous plaque with the firm’s name.

It is the relationship of at least one of the names on that plaque to the Citizens’ Council and the Sovereignty Commission that opens the door to the secretive activity that kept Yazoo City under tight wraps while other towns exploded. A 1958 Sovereignty Commission report on Yazoo City explains how the Citizens Council controlled race relations in the city:

The Executive Committee meets for lunch each Friday noon at a luncheon at Dandries Restaurant. At these meetings, they take up anything pertinent to racial relations that has happened during the last week and decide what action should be taken. If the complaint is with reference to some Negro agitator, a committee will go to the Negro’s boss and discuss the situation with him. Usually the boss will fire the Negro. That will end the matter without the Citizens’ Council being outwardly involved.  [SCR ID # 2-13-0-3-1-1-1]

Early in the history of both organizations, the Council sought to collaborate with the Sovereignty Commission.  The above memo notes:

The members of the executive council promised thorough cooperation with the Sovereignty Commission relative to any matters that might arise regarding racial relations in Yazoo County.

That cooperation began with an invitation from the Yazoo City Citizens’ Council to the Sovereignty Commission to attend the Friday meeting. From the very beginning the relationship between the Council and the Commission was one of collaboration.  Not long after the Friday meeting Sovereignty Commission head Zack Van Landingham wrote Yazoo City Sheriff James Moore about a meeting between them concluding:

I trust you will feel free to call on me at any time should there appear to be any developments or potential agitation with reference to the Negroes in your county. [SCR ID # 2-13-0-9-1-1-1]

The report of that meeting with the Sheriff explains why Yazoo City had been so “quiet” as Barbour claimed:

He stated that the troublemakers who had been responsible for the public school petition to integrate the races had all left Yazoo City due to economic reprisals which had been made against them. None of them have returned.

He also attributes the lack of interest on the part of the Negroes to the three strong Citizens’ Councils which are in operation in Yazoo County.[SCR ID # 2-13-0-10-1-1-]

The cooperation between the two groups grows over the next year with Van Landingham writing the chief of police to ask for a list of “potential agitators” and members of the “NAACP.” The sheriff duly cooperated by sending back the names and addresses of two African Americans, noting that one of them was “a janitor at the Post Office.” [SCR ID # 2-13-0-12-1-1-1]

The MSSC Becomes More Involved in Yazoo City

The Sovereignty Commission, the Council and Yazoo law enforcement continued to collaborate throughout the 1960s. The Commission notes that members of the Council include a “prominent local farmer,” the owner of the Goodyear Tire Shop, a local doctor who was serving as President and Herman DeCell, the law partner of Haley Barbour’s father. This brings us to an interesting question the MSSC files cannot answer–was Barbour’s father–and perhaps Barbour himself–a member of the Council?

Given the cleansing of the records it is highly likely any references to Barbour would have been deleted. Yet although there is no smoking gun, the circumstantial evidence is intriguing. If 1,500 people belonged to the Council and Council ranks were dominated by leading citizens it would have been a deliberate slight on the part of Barbour’s father to not belong to the Council. If nothing else his law practice would have suffered.

The involvement of DeCell (who as we shall see becomes more involved in Council and MSSC activities) ties a member of the Barbour law firm to the inner circle of the Council. It is hard to believe the firm did not discuss DeCell’s activities, even if only in the context of his case load. Perhaps Haley’s Barbour’s intent in his remarks to the Weekly Standard may have been to head off the inevitable questions about the Council and the Commission that would come with any Presidential bid.

The Collaboration Continues

The relationship between the Yazoo Citizens’ Council and the Sovereignty Commission blossomed when none other than Barbour law partner Herman DeCell, who was a state senator, was appointed to the Sovereignty Commission by segregationist Governor Ross Barnett in 1960. This puts a senior member of the Barbour law firm at the center of one of the more despicable activities in American history.

Although DeCell is coy about why he was appointed to the commission the reasons seem obvious: he was an important member of the Yazoo City Citizens’ Council. The Council had made the town a model for other Mississippi communities about how to shut down the movement for civil rights without having to resort to crude techniques like fire hoses and police dogs that landed on the nightly news.

All it took was for that Friday meeting group to decide the fate of a local African American without a trial or lawyer or even knowing what had taken place. If the Friday group voted thumbs down, that African American would be called into the office of his boss and handed a pink slip. Out of work he would find he could not get credit at local stores. Word would pass quickly through the community about what had happened.

It was a different level of intimidation than a lynching, but an effective one because it clearly had the backing of the town’s “leading citizens” who sent the message that activity frowned on by the Friday group would result in harsh retribution.

In an oral history interview on file with the University of Southern Mississippi DeCell portrays himself as a moderate who did not think the Sovereignty Commission was that effective. In answer to a question about the Commission working with the Citizens’ Councils DeCell mentions only that it was educational, providing news releases and radio programs (curiously he omits the financial contributions which occurred while he was on the Commission).

DeCell is also vague about the activities of the Commission commenting that its most useful activities were information and fact gathering. Because the records are incomplete it is unclear whether Commission members really knew everything the Commission was involved in, but, as records show, DeCell knew some of them.

Among the more disconcerting Sovereignty Commission documents concerning Yazoo City are several that discuss an investigation of three African American teachers at the local “Training School for Negroes,” an investigation that DeCell supported and aided, at one point requesting that Sovereignty Commission investigators meet with the local superintendent.

The agent in charge mentions giving DeCell both a verbal and written report. Apparently the Commission and the Council wanted to ascertain whether any of these African Americans were involved with civil rights activities so a recommendation could be made to the school board whether or not to retain them.  The report noted the superintendent had a low regard for one of the three and that he would not be retained. [ SCR ID # 2-13-0-21-1-1-1 ]

However, a report filed several days before provides a possible reason for the teacher’s dismissal.   Curiously, the first page is missing.  Three other pages detail an extensive investigation into whether any of the teachers had attended an NAACP meeting. Two of them said they went to the site of the meeting looking for their son. There they met the third and told him to let their son know they were trying to find him.

[Subject] states that his wife and daughter remained in the vestibule of the church while the meeting was in progress and he waited outside under a tree.[ SCR ID # 2-13-0-23-2-1-1 ]

The agent gives two teachers a positive report, stating:

It seems obvious [he] had been concerned about the safety of his son. [ SCR ID # 2-13-0-23-3-1-1 ]

The third teacher did not receive such a positive report. The agent interviewed him in the school cafeteria.  Unfortunately the stories don’t match as the third teacher says he met the other two outside where the meeting was taking place.  The agent also discovered the wife of the third teacher gave a false address for the purpose of paying less taxes.

This information was given to [a member of] the steering committee of the Citizens’ Council [and the Chief of Police] and Herman DeCell. [ SCR ID # 2-13-0-23-3-1-1 ]

All decided it would be better if the Citizens’ Council contacted the superintendent “rather than a representative of the Sovereignty Commission contact him.” [ SCR ID # 2-41-0-33-4-1-1 ] Connecting the dots it appears the third teacher lost his job because a Sovereignty Commission investigator told the Citizens’ Council he believed the teacher had attended an NAACP meeting plus discovered that his wife was trying to avoid paying taxes.

Why Yazoo City Was So Quiet

As the Civil Rights movement heated up in the South the Commission continued its close relationship with Yazoo City. In 1967 Erle Johnston, jr., who had become the head of the Commission, wrote DeCell :

We have received from our sources a report that Rudolph Shields may soon move into Yazoo City. Shields is a strong-arm organizer who works for the NAACP. He is the chief trouble-maker in Hazlehurst, Port Gibson and Centreville. He is well experienced in organizing boycotts.

The letter than adds a sentence that sends chills up your spine and leaves no doubts the Sovereignty Commission was about more than “information”:

We have developed a technique that in the past has made his efforts less effective.[SCR ID # 2-13-0-53-1-1-1]

Checking Sovereignty Commission Records on Shields shows how involved it was in suppressing the Civil Rights Movement and what tactics it used.  One was harassment by law enforcement. Document SCR ID # 1-112-0-5-1-1-1 shows that from September 9, 1965 until October 26, Shields was arrested four times, twice for assault and battery, once for “profanity” and once for “interfering with an officer.”

The Sovereignty Commission also put pressure on Charles Evers to discipline Shields.  This included sending a Commission agent to Evers’ hospital room where he was recovering from surgery and demanding that “something had to be done immediately.” [SCR ID # 1-112-0-12-1-1-1 ]

Shields had been giving Mississippi officials a great deal of trouble with a boycott he had organized in Hattiesburg. A Commission report noted:

We have decided to break up by any means necessary the enforcement of the boycott. [SCR ID # 1-112-0-14-1-1-1]

That tactic was to remove the enforcers, which began with 86 arrests on various charges.  Apparently the Sovereignty Commission believed the arrest tactics worked noting in a memorandum:

Investigator Lee Cole, who has been successful on many occasions getting Shields arrested and jailed for law violations, has been assigned temporarily to Belzoni (NOTE: The Commission was worried Shields would organize a boycott there). [SCR ID # 1-112-0-24-1-1-1]

While the Commission was trying to neutralize Shields, it sent an agent to Yazoo City to find out why that area had been relatively quiet. The report notes:

In 1954, when Mississippi begin [sic] to experience racial difficulties, 53 Yazoo County Negroes signed a petition requesting the admission of their children to the white schools in Yazoo County. The white people of Yazoo County organized for the purpose of combating this petition and shortly after it was presented to the school board, many of the signers found themselves out of work, unable to continue trade with the local merchants on credit and unable to find employment or jobs where white people in control. [SCR ID # 2-13-0-51-1-1-1]

Yazoo had simply asserted a 1950s version of slavery.  By that I mean no African-American could work in that town or trade in its stores who did not have the support of the Council.  All someone had to do was identify an African-American as a troublemaker and that put an end to the trouble. That person could no longer make a living in the city. This was reinforced by Sovereignty Commission investigations of people like the three schoolteachers.

Much like Soviet Russia or East Germany people were kept in line by the knowledge that unseen eyes were watching their every move.  Finally add to this the known collusion of law enforcement, the Council and the Sovereignty Commission and Yazoo City becomes the American equivalent of a totalitarian state.

The full meaning of the situation in Yazoo City can be grasped in additional Commission documents. One is a personal letter from the head of the Commission to an official of the Mississippi Chemical Company in Yazoo informing it of activities by a woman involved in various civil rights activities. [SCR ID # 2-13-0-54-1-1-1]

Informing a company of an employee’s activities was a common Sovereignty Commission tactic. The employer was then expected to deal with the matter.  The Chemical Company official responds that he appreciates the information and “your continuing assistance.” [ SCR ID # 2-13-0-55-1-1-1 ] Further exchanges concerning the woman end with the board of the organization the woman worked for assuring the Commission she would be removed.

Meanwhile, even after leaving the Commission, DeCell continues to work with it. In response to a Commission alert that the NAACP was planning a possible action in Yazoo City, DeCell replies that “they would like to have our help in case anything gets out of hand.” [ SCR ID # 2-13-0-57-1-1-1]

The Extent of Commission Activities

Sovereignty Commission activities in Yazoo City and elsewhere involved continual surveillance of African Americans.  If there was a meeting that might involve a discussion of voting rights or some other issue, the Commission wrote down the license plate numbers of all the cars and forwarded them to law enforcement. If whites driving vehicles with out-of-state plates were seen talking with African Americans, their license plate numbers were noted.  In addition the African Americans seen talking with them would be questioned as to the nature of the conversation.

Having read the Commission documents on Fannie Lou Hamer and now the Yazoo City documents, it is clear the Commission operated as the equivalent of Mississippi’s secret police. An agent recommended pressuring a black college to purge itself of Civil Rights “agitators” by threatening to revoke the teaching licenses of the entire faculty and of those who graduated with teaching licenses. A third memo tells of a plant visit by representatives of a racist group that threatened the plant owner if he did not stop hiring African Americans.

Paging through memos like this becomes unnerving. Looking at a document with Hamer’s name underlined with a dark pen stroke inspires thoughts of enemies lists and death decrees. At some point, though, the records become routine, making you wonder if you, like those who compiled them, have become numb to it all.

Haley Barbour’s Position

Haley Barbour certainly seems to have become numb to it all. That his father’s law firm was a prime player in Yazoo City’s totalitarian government seems to have escaped him. While there is no evidence Barbour himself was involved in these activities as a young man there seems little question about his family.

Unlike Germany after the Nazi era or South Africa after apartheid, America has never had the courage to institute its own reconciliation, a moral and legal accounting that must confront the Sovereignty Commission and other systematic attempts to derail civil rights. The Commission destroyed lives and those who were wronged have a right to confront those who ruined them.

Reading the Yazoo City records after having read Hamer’s file has to lead to the inevitable question, “What would Fannie Lou Hamer think of Haley Barbour as Governor of Mississippi or a potential President?”  I think all of us know the answer to that question, especially now that we have the Yazoo City records of the same Sovereignty Commission that investigated Hamer.

It certainly would be the ultimate American irony if we went from an African American President to someone whose father may have been a Citizens’ Council member and collaborated with the MSSC.

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