Clarion-Ledger from Jackson, Mississippi • Page 77

Sunday, January 28, 1990 The Clarion-Ledger 31 Civil rights workers Alt racial tension I wmm. Tl ri miks are avgt (tUKSMSSs 8s ajtiHI SW water '7' Michele StapletonThe Clarion-Ledger School bears name linked .1 to agency Black educator B.L. Bell was a paid informant, commission documents show. By Jerry Mitchell Clarion-Ledger Staff Writer IJOYLE B.L. Bell was so committed' to education an elementary school was named for him.

He shared information about NAACP workers so well the' state Sovereignty Commission paid him for it. Known by friends as "Professor Bell," the black educator served as principal of the Cleveland Colored Consolidated School before he died in 1961 after working for the school system 31 years. Bell was one of dozens of spies paid and unpaid, black and white, prominent and obscure whose cooperation with the agency is revealed in commission documents obtained by The Clarion-Ledger. Documents show Bell volunteered his services in a 1958 letter to Gov. J.P.

Coleman, chairman of the commission. "It is my greatest ambition to hold a job with the state Sovereignty Commission," Bell wrote. "Many white friends of mine here in this county know personally how that I have been able to get over to my people the best things for us." Coleman gave the letter to the commission, which found Bell to be a "white man's Negro," a report says. A Jan. 15, 1959, document shows the commission voted to pay Bell $100 a month for three months "for the purpose of setting up a secret underground organization of Negroes to assist in maintaining segregation in Mississippi." Bell attended NAACP meetings, then reported the names of members and what they said, documents show.

At one meeting, state NAACP President Aaron Henry accused Bell of working for the Sovereignty Commission a charge Bell vehemently denied. Friends and family members deny Bell was a spy for the commission. "I don't believe it," said Bell's daughter, Arlene Bell Davidson, a fifth-grade teacher in Chicago. "Too many black people have respect for him. I'm sure Students head for their buses at the end of the school day at Bell Elementary in the small Delta town of Boyle.

wrote 'Operator 79' The informant joined the Council of Federated Organizations and reported on meetings with the NAACP. By Leesha Cooper Clarion-Ledger Staff Writer Harmony between black and white civil rights workers was only skin deep. Although they held hands and sang of brotherhood, a confidential informant filed reports with the state Sovereignty Commission about friction among workers for the Council of Federated Organizations, according to agency documents obtained by The Clarion-Ledger. "There are racial conflicts within COFO. Most of our staff personnel are whites.

The white personnel are in almost complete control. Issues are decided without the help of the Negroes," the infiltrator, Operator 79, wrote the commission July 10, 1964. COFO was organized in 1964 to register and educate blacks for voting. Its racial makeup isn't shown in state or COFO records. The identity of Operator 79, the commission's COFO undercover agent, is unknown.

Operator 79's reports weren't credible, said Erie Johnston, commission director from 1963 until 1968. The informant could have been one of several people turning in information to one of a few detective agencies selling reports to the commission, Johnston said. Charles Evers, who returned to Mississippi to take over leadership of the NAACP after the assassination of his brother Medgar on June 12, 1963, said there were fierce struggles between whites and blacks. "Blacks have always had problems with white men dating our women," he said. "It was always white men dating black women.

It wasn't black men dating white women." But the jealousy wasn't only racial. Commission reports outline a struggle between COFO and the NAACP that led to a showdown at a July 22, 1964, rally at the Masonic lodge on Lynch Street in Jackson. "We (COFO) had amassed together to pull off demonstration against the NAACP in protest of our staffs being excluded from the program," Operator 79 wrote in a report to the commission. "It was our intent to drown out the whole program. We started heckling from the beginning of the program, and we grew louder and louder." COFO workers, chiefly from the North, wanted to take over the state's civil rights organizations and run them their way, Evers said.

"They were too extreme," Evers said. "What we wanted was justice in Mississippi without violence." Commission records show COFO fizzled out after many workers left in the fall of 1964 to return to school, leaving the work to state organizations. thought the Sovereignty Commission was a very racist organization." Neill never considered himself a spy, he said. "I guess what I did was undercover (work). I didn't tell people what I was going to do." Two white Ole Miss students who in 1964 infiltrated the Congress of Federated Organizations office in Jackson.

In a 1964 report, they describe COFO members as "a group of Negroes and low white trash We were able to convince them we were integrationists." They add, "May God never let this be true." The "Knights of the Great Forest," an anonymous group of Ole Miss students supporting segregation, who supplied the commission names of students and teachers supporting integration, including the late historian James Silver. The Rev. J.H. Parker, a leader of the black Southern Baptist Convention, and the Rev. H.H.

Humes, its president, who were cited for work for the commission in an Oct. 2, 1958 memo. "It is due to the efforts of these men that we have been able to keep the NAACP out of their powerful organization and keep it friendly to the state," an Oct. 3, 1958, commission report said. Parker and Humes are dead.

some of these same people would know that kind of involvement." Her father could well have been a double agent for the NAACP, she said. "I think he could have been using the Sovereignty Commission. We were too poor for him to have done anything else." Bell's cousin, Lawrence Harris Sr. of Chicago, agreed. "They couldn't have given him too much because he didn't have much," Harris said.

"I know he had to sell a lot of property to make ends meet." Buford C. Holmes of Cleveland, a fellow educator and friend of Bell, said he didn't know then Bell was a spy, but "later on I found out there was a possibility." Holmes speculated Bell cooperated for fear of losing his job. Although documents show Bell worked for the commission, Harris defended his character. "He was a great man," Harris said. "Everyone accepted him, both white and black." Commission spies provided the state with an important network to maintain its vise-like grip on segregation.

"Eyes and ears for the state Sovereignty Commission have been established in each county," the commission said in 1959. "A program has been formulated which will necessitate additional investigative personnel and expenditures." Documents show other spies included: Charles Lamar Neill III, a white University of Mississippi student between 1967 and 1970. He supplied information in 1969 on students' alleged drug use and other activities to Security Consultants a Jackson detective agency hired by the commission. The report based on Neill's surveillance discussed the possible overthrow of the Ole Miss administration by a radical group known as the "New Left" and the smoking of marijuana by students. "It is noted that the source, when the cigarette was passed to him, cleverly faked the use of such," the detective agency report says.

At the same time Neill supplied information to Security Consultants, he was serving on the board of the Mississippi chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, documents show. Contacted recently, Neill said he had no idea his findings were forwarded. "I didn't realize we were connected with the Sovereignty Commission," said Neill, now a Seattle contractor. "I never held the commission in high regard. "What I did wasn't right," he said.

"I i.mw uW. i w- Charles Evers' civil rights work attracted black and white critics 11 ft Jr ft I 'lily I III I Mm WET 'j! ti-1 if I If Dbnl ON 1 I. I I I 'Mf-p- v. sAv The Associated Press A Jackson police officer arrests two pickets for demonstrating for civil rights on Capitol Street in 1963. 'Goon squads' provided protection for civil rights workers across state He said he is now friends with the ex-director of the Sovereignty Commission.

By Leesha Cooper Clarion-Ledger Staff Writer Charles Evers' reputation depends upon who recalls the events of a quarter-century ago. Evers, who returned to Mississippi from Chicago to lead the NAACP after his brother Medgar was assassinated on June 12, 1963, sees himself as benefactor to Mississippi blacks. "I was always in touch with Medgar," Charles Evers said in a recent interview. "I sent money down that helped with the work going on here." Investigators for the state Sovereignty Commission reported a different side of Evers. "When NAACP leader Charles Evers made speeches urging Negroes to boycott Port Gibson stores and buy their groceries in Wood-lawn Grocery at Natchez, we determined by an investigation that Evers himself owned Woodlawn Grocery," commission documents obtained by The Clarion-Ledger say.

Evers, now general manager of WMPR-FM radio station near Tougaloo College, would not respond directly to the claim. "Sometimes they lied in the reports," he said. But Erie Johnston, director of the commission from 1963 until 1968, said recently Evers admitted ownership of the store. Despite old conflicts, Evers said he and Johnston are friends. "We both look back now and see how stupid it was.

Because I was black and from Scott County like he is we couldn't have a chance to go to the same restaurant if we wanted to, and I walk in there with my friend and he walk in there with his friend," Evers said. Johnston won't talk directly about his relationship with Evers during the civil rights era or now. "Of course, I had contact with certain civil rights leaders. It wasn't necessarily Charles Evers," Johnston said. "I don't know how Evers would take to it.

I'm not going to wave a red flag in his face." Evers also has black critics. AjjL The groups were important at strategy meetings and boycotts. J.D. SchwalmThe Clarion-Ledger Charles Evers said he was always in touch with his slain brother Medgar, in photo on wall, field secretary of the NAACP in Mississippi. By Leesha Cooper Clarion-Ledger Staff Writer now being called the Deacons and that they have, in fact, spread into two patrols and they are operating what they call a 'police unit' in the Negro areas." Johnston recently termed Shields "the kind of guy who was no help to the blacks." Johnston recalled Shields as a loud talker who threatened rather than compromised his way through a boycott.

"Evers just couldn't control him," Johnston said. "He (Shields) was the only guy that I ever had an investigator follow. "He was a detriment to any kind of negotiation or any kind of settlement," Johnston said. "If certain demands were made by the community, he made more demands." But commission records show Shields and other deacons ensured effectiveness of boycotts against white-owned businesses. "We placed a person at different places seeing who went out of the store," Evers said.

"If they came out of the stores and had packages, we instructed them to take destroy whatever they had bought in that racist store." "We were heavy armed," Evers said. "Once or twice we fired in the air a couple of times, but we never killed anyone." Sovereignty Commission records obtained by The Clarion-Ledger show the agency carefully watched Deacons of Defense in 1967, when blacks began boycotting white businesses to protest treatment of black customers and the lack of black clerks. The chief deacon was Rudy Shields, an Evers ally. Shields followed Evers to Mississippi from Chicago and never returned home. Evers described Shields, who died of a stroke about three years ago, as a ruthless troubleshooter.

"He was fearless. That's what we needed then," Evers said. "I always sent him in to areas to test the waters, and he would report back to me." Shields and the deacons were the subject of a July 21, 1967, memo from commission investigator Lee Cole to commission Director Erie Johnston: "Police state their information is that the group that Shields heads is awards. Myrlie Evers, Medgar Evers' widow, also protested the award. She hasn't spoken to her former brother-in-law since.

Presentation of the award to Savimbi insulted the cause that took Medgar Evers' life, she said. "Medgar was a freedom fighter who gave his life so all people could live together and work." Charles Evers doesn't apologize for his past and criticizes those without the courage to take stands on civil rights issues. "I never believed that all men would be equal. I never believed that," he said. "Some will be blind, some will be crippled, some will be deaf, some will be black, some will be white, some will be rich, some will be poor.

That's just the way life is. "The opportunity is what we fought for," he said. "That's what should be there." Henry Kirksey, a former state senator and civil rights advocate, blames Evers for some of the problems blacks faced during the 1960s. "People like Charlie made it possible for these (commission) officials to have some means of justifying what they did," he said. For example, using information supplied by the commission, state Rep.

Francis Geoghegan denounced Evers on the floor of the House in the late 1960s for profiting from his civil rights work in endeavors such as the grocery incident. Kirksey denounced Evers two years ago when the Medgar Evers Humanitarian Award was given to Angolan rebel Jonas Savimbi. The recipient was president of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, which received military aid from the segregationist government of South Africa. Charles Evers, chairman of the foundation, decides who gets the The state Sovereignty Commission called them "goon squads." But to civil rights workers, they were protectors. The Deacons of Defense was organized shortly after Charles Evers returned to Mississippi from Chicago in 1963 to succeed his slain brother Medgar as field director of the NAACP.

"They were people who were protecting us and defending us," Evers said recently. "At that time, our worst enemies were the local sheriff and his posse, the local mayor and his police department, the highway patrolmen. We had no protection." Groups were organized in most communities. They were posted outside church meetings while civil rights workers discussed strategy, said Evers, who is now general manager of WMPR-FM radio station near Tougaloo..