March 6, 2014
BH 439
After celebrating Dr. Martin
Luther King’s birthday and African American History Month, most of us will be
fooled into believing we are rejoicing the freedom so many have fought and died
for.
And because of some elected
officials in the Republican Party, African
Americans in some states are still suffering from the imbalanced world of
disenfranchisement, segregation and various forms of oppression, including
race-inspired violence, such as the Travon Martin and Jordan Davis killings.
During the MLK and Black History Month observations some of you remembered
how many of our groups and organizations were infiltrated by enemies and spies.
Some discussed Cointelpro, a government-initiated counter-intelligence program
organized to disrupt and ultimately destroy the civil rights and antiwar
movements and victimize or discredit civil rights leaders and activists during
the 1960s.
Under Cointelpro the
FBI, CIA, and many local police and law enforcement agencies used informers to
infiltrate these organizations. One of the stated purposes of this program was
to "neutralize" Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and Elijah Muhammad,
in order to prevent the emergence, in the government’s terms, of a “Black
Messiah” who would have the potential of uniting and leading a mass organization
of Black Americans in their struggle for freedom and economic equality.
While
these agencies and their tactics became known, there was another group that
most of us were unaware of. One that used Black people to inform on the NAACP,
CORE, SNCC and other civil rights and progressive organizations. The agency was
The
Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission.
A
new book and documentary film, Spies
of Mississippi tells
the story of a secret spy agency formed by the state of Mississippi to preserve
segregation and maintain “the Mississippi way of life,” white supremacy, during
the 1950s and ‘60s. The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission (MSSC) evolved
from a predominantly public relations agency to a full-fledged spy operation,
spying on over 87,000 Americans over the course of a decade.
The Commission employed a network of
investigators and informants, including African
Americans, to help infiltrate these groups and was granted broad powers to
investigate private citizens and organizations, keep secret files, make
arrests, and compel testimony for a state that, as civil rights activist
Lawrence Guyot says in the film, “was committed to an apartheid system that
would make South Africa blush.”
Spies
of Mississippi tracks
the Commission’s hidden role in many of the most important chapters of the
civil rights movement, including the integration of the University of
Mississippi, the assassination of Medgar Evers, and the 1964 KKK murders of 21 year-old black Mississippian, James Chaney, and
two white New Yorkers, Andrew Goodman, 20, and Michael Schwerner, 24.
Most shocking to me were the African
Americans who were the traitors.
They are named in the film and I am sure you will, or perhaps not, be
surprised. I am positive that similar activities are being conducted today, in
St. Louis and other cities and towns around the country. We know that social, economic, cultural, and political
independence is the only road to total liberation from oppression,
exploitation, and racism but we have some of our own working against us.
Southern
terrorist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, developed ways of intimidating African-Americans who wanted
to vote through lynching and destroying communities through fire. Like to what
the Republican
Party is doing now through new voter ID and registration laws and by finding Black people who arewilling to sell out the entire
movement for a few dollars and a pat on their head.
I don’t know if Marcus Garvey and
Carter G. Woodson were prophets but their words were certainly prophetic.
Carter G Woodson wrote “one can cite cases
of Negroes who opposed emancipation and denounced the abolitionists. We do not
show the Negro how to overcome segregation, but we teach him how to accept it
as final and just.”
And Marcus Garvey noted ‘I have no desire
to take all black people back to Africa; there are blacks who are no good here
and will likewise be no good there’.
Garvey also said “The Black skin is not a
badge of shame, but rather a glorious symbol of national greatness. Up, you
mighty race, accomplish what you will.”
Please watch the Bernie Hayes TV program Saturday Night at
10pm and Friday Morning at 9 am and Sunday Evenings at 5:30 pm on KNLC-TV Ch.
24, and follow me on Twitter: @berhay and view my Blog @ http://berniehayesunderstands.blogspot.com/
Be Ever Wonderful!
Hotep!
