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