Mississippi Creates State Sovereignty Commission for Civil Rights Surveillance and Segregationist Funding

In March 1956, the Mississippi Legislature creates the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission (MSSC), a state agency tasked with fighting integration and controlling civil rights activism. Active from 1956 to 1973 and directed by the governor and other top elected officials, the Commission employs former law enforcement officials and others to observe and report on the activities of private citizens suspected of engaging in civil rights activism.

The Commission operates as both a public relations agency promoting segregation and a covert surveillance operation. It penetrates most major civil rights organizations in Mississippi, planting clerical workers in offices of activist attorneys, informing police about planned marches or boycotts, encouraging police harassment of African Americans who cooperate with civil rights groups, obstructing voter registration by blacks, and harassing African-Americans seeking to attend white schools. The Commission uses paid and unpaid informants throughout the state to keep the NAACP and Mississippi Progressive Voters’ League under surveillance. By summer 1959, these informants and investigators accumulate more than four thousand index cards and several hundred investigative files.

Under Governor Ross Barnett (1960-1964), the Commission enlarges its investigative operations, sending agents across the state to report on civil rights activities, surveying literature and libraries, and collecting information on persons viewed as expressing liberal ideas or violating traditional racial mores. During this period, the Commission channels state money to White Citizens’ Councils. In 1960, the Commission votes a grant of $20,000 to the “Council Forum.” From 1960 to December 1964, the Commission provides documented monthly grants to the Citizens’ Council totaling $193,500 in public funds.

The Commission uses its intelligence-gathering capabilities to assist in the defense of Byron De La Beckwith, murderer of Medgar Evers, during his second trial. The Commission also sponsors a Speakers’ Bureau to argue for the benefits of segregation and produces segregationist propaganda.

When the Commission’s records are finally unsealed following a legal battle initiated in 1977 by the ACLU of Mississippi, they reveal more than 87,000 names of citizens about whom the state had collected information or classified as “suspects.” The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission represents the most systematic state-sponsored surveillance and political suppression operation in modern U.S. history outside of federal agencies.

This infrastructure—using public funds to support private political organizations, conducting surveillance on citizens exercising constitutional rights, and coordinating between government agencies and private groups to suppress political opposition—provides an organizational model later adapted by conservative movement infrastructure. The Commission demonstrates how state resources can be weaponized for political purposes while maintaining a veneer of legitimacy through official government channels.