Spies of Mississippi (7 page)

A tall, well-dressed black man strides with confidence down the hallway of the Masonic Temple in the heart of the bustling “colored section” of Jackson, Mississippi, in March 1964.
He stops at a door leading to the large meeting room, waits for a nod from a man standing guard, and takes a seat in the spectators’ gallery. Scanning the faces of the men and women sitting at the meeting table in the center of the room, he recognizes a virtual who’s who of the state’s civil rights leadership, including the highest-ranking leaders of the NAACP and SNCC. The unassuming spectator listens intently. No one in the room suspects that the seemingly innocuous visitor has his own agenda. Far from being a sympathizer with the cause, he is actually a private detective being paid to keep tabs on the civil rights crusaders for the segregationist state.

After the meeting, the private eye reports to his superiors at the Day Detective Agency in Jackson. He provides a synopsis of the meeting and a document marked “Confidential: Mississippi Freedom Summer.” The Day detectives will supply a full report to their prized client, the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission. The report—single-spaced on plain white paper—will bear the telltale mark of a hand-scrawled X with a circle around it—the sign that it originated with a top secret, black informant code-named Agent X.

The report from Agent X described plans for an extensive voter registration campaign to be carried out across the state over the coming summer. The project would link hundreds—perhaps even thousands—of mostly white college students from the North with dozens of black freedom workers from Mississippi. Three major civil rights organizations—the NAACP, SNCC, and CORE—would execute the campaign under the umbrella of the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO).

The document attached to the report said that more than 2,000 students, teachers, nurses, and legal advisers would form a “Peace Corps–type operation” designed to transform race relations in the state. The volunteers would set up Freedom Schools to teach reading and writing to black children and teens and establish community centers to provide adult literacy classes and vocational training programs to adults. Volunteers would also prepare thousands of blacks to register to vote for the first time and lay the groundwork for black candidates to run for public office.

“The program of voter registration and political organization will attempt to change the fundamental structure of political and economic activity in Mississippi,” the report stated.

As plans for Freedom Summer developed, Agent X continued to feed intelligence to the Commission, revealing the organizers’ plans to prepare “Negros to run for the United States Congress.” “It appears now that one of the main purposes of the proposed statewide voter registration campaign is directed to this end,” one of Agent X’s reports stated. The infiltrator considered no piece of intelligence insignificant. He even reported plans for a “completely integrated” folk concert starring singer Joan Baez on April 5, 1964, at Tougaloo College to drum up interest in the summer offensive.

As Freedom Summer grew closer, Agent X struck again. He persuaded the COFO leadership to put him on the staff. “After a few interviews,” he reported to the commission, “I was offered a position.” Upon gaining the trust of the COFO staff, the spy began searching the office for confidential reports that would reveal the latest plans. The clever infiltrator patiently awaited his chance to intercept the documents. On June 2, he told his handlers, “I decided it would be better to wait another day before picking up this literature.”

At an opportune moment, Agent X secretly copied the applications of student activists accepted into the Freedom Summer program. He passed the names, addresses, driver’s license numbers, and photographs on to the Commission.

As the clock continued to tick, Agent X wrangled an invitation to an extensive training seminar for several hundred student activists to be held at the Western College for Women in Oxford, Ohio, on June 16, 1964. On that date, Director Johnston was informed that “X is departing this date for Oxford, Ohio, with wife and will forward reports to a blind P.O. Box here in Jackson and make periodic telephone reports on activities.”

Upon arriving on the campus on June 17, X seamlessly blended in to sessions preparing the student activists for the danger ahead. Posing as one of the few black activists from Mississippi, he gained access to sessions on registering voters, dealing with police brutality, and opening the Freedom Schools.

During one session his friend R. Jess Brown, a black lawyer from Jackson, told the students, “Now get this in your heads and remember what I am going to say. They—the white folk, the police, the state police—they are all waiting for you. They are looking for you. They are ready. They are armed. They know some of your names and your descriptions even now, even before you get to Mississippi.”

Naturally, Agent X knew that all too well. He was one of the secret operatives making sure that the state was fully prepared. He and his confederates had supplied the Commission with extensive information on Freedom Summer throughout that spring and had filed more extensive reports through his 11 days at the training seminar. He revealed the names, descriptions, and destinations of key activists; the role to be played by volunteer lawyers; the plans of key reporters covering the initiative; and the mounting fears of students destined for hostile territory.

As X fed the pipeline, the Commission staff worked diligently to prepare the state to repel the invaders. Commission agent Tom Scarborough set up meetings across the state to prepare public officials and civic leaders for the onslaught of northern college students. “The purpose of these meetings has been to organize the city and county officials to work in a coordinated unit to handle the racial agitators who have promised to invade Mississippi this summer,” Scarborough reported. In Lafayette County, Scarborough warned community leaders that the invasion would be led by “communists, sex perverts, odd balls, and do-gooders.” Meeting with a group of newly elected county sheriffs, Scarborough warned the incoming lawmen that many of their counties were destined to be overrun by radicals. The law enforcement community was getting edgy.

Commission agents also set out to visit sheriff’s offices in all 82 counties to prepare law enforcement officers for potential trouble. The agents provided police with a summary of 19 state laws that could be used to arrest or detain troublemakers. Their goal was to strengthen the hand of county sheriff’s offices statewide, which had been fortified with hundreds of newly deputized auxiliary officers. The police were gearing up for a virtual war with the “outside agitators.”

As the Commission fueled the fevered preparations, a new development arose. Agent Andy Hopkins had been investigating the intense competition for recruits between violent new factions of the Klan. One night shots were fired into Hopkins’s house, and Klan literature was left in his yard. It appeared that the resurgent Klan was gearing up for war, too. The new Klan was so extreme that it was ready to take on the Commission itself—on top of their common enemy—in defense of white rule.

The wild swirl of events was cascading out of the control of a state leadership that had changed dramatically over the past six months. Former lieutenant governor Paul Johnson had been elected to succeed his mentor Ross Barnett after running on the slogan “Stand Tall with Paul,” reminding voters of his stand in the schoolhouse door at Ole Miss. Commission director Erle Johnston was advising the new governor on the state’s preparations for Freedom Summer. But as the summer program drew close, Johnston informed his boss of “secret organizations of white people, whose mission apparently is to take laws into their own hands.”

In fact, the newly formed and violent White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan were entering dozens of recruits in the newly formed auxiliary police units. These Klansmen would not wear hoods and robes to confront the “invaders” instead, they would wear badges and carry state-issued firearms. As Freedom Summer approached, the imperial wizard of the White Knights, Sam Bowers, told his followers, “The first contact with the troops of the enemy in the street should be as legally deputized law enforcement officers.”

Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney were at the Freedom Summer training seminar in Ohio, too.
As the three young activists listened to lectures, attended workshops, and sang freedom songs, they never imagined that a black segregationist spy was watching, listening, and reporting back to Mississippi. On June 20, 1964, the three climbed into their CORE-issued, blue 1963 Ford Fairlane station wagon and set out for the Magnolia State. The ultimate destination was Mt. Zion Methodist Church in Neshoba County, Mississippi. Three nights earlier, Klansmen had doused the church with kerosene and set it ablaze. The activists wanted to help the congregation rebuild the church to make good on plans to use it as a Freedom School.

Like many of the Freedom Summer volunteers, Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney were in their 20s, idealistic, and committed, but they hailed from vastly different backgrounds.

Michael “Mickey” Schwerner was 24, white, college educated, and married. He was the son of a successful businessman and a high school biology teacher from New York. Mickey sported a trademark goatee and loved sports, rock music, poker, and comedian W. C. Fields. In his application to serve as a CORE organizer, Schwerner vowed to spend the rest of his life working toward an integrated society. He had spent the previous summer registering voters in Meridian, Mississippi.

Andrew Goodman was a 20-year-old white graduate of a liberal, private high school in New York, who had gone on to study at Queens College. He hailed from an affluent, politically connected family that owned a share of the left-leaning Pacifica radio network. Goodman had a flair for music and acting. He felt that a summer of civil rights work in Mississippi would extend his horizons beyond his privileged background.

James Chaney was a 21-year-old, poor, black native of Meridian, Mississippi. His mother cleaned houses for white families, and his father had worked construction jobs as a plasterer before he had left the family. As Chaney matured, he recognized the depth of discrimination in his hometown and saw civil rights work as a route out.

On the afternoon of June 21, 1964, Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney rolled in to Neshoba County en route to the ruins of the Mt. Zion Methodist Church. Chaney was at the wheel of the station wagon, license number H 25503. The car was already on a watch list at the Neshoba County sheriff’s office. In the wild swirl of events leading up to Freedom Summer, the Commission had sent the information to law enforcement officials across the state, and the White Citizens’ Council had picked it up and circulated it as well. Schwerner was particularly well known to the authorities, given his work registering voters in Meridian the year before. Schwerner was also well known to the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, whose leaders nicknamed him Goatee and targeted him for death.

At about 4 p.m., Neshoba County deputy sheriff Cecil Price pulled over the car. Price arrested Chaney for speeding and took all three men to the jail in nearby Philadelphia. As the men sat in their cells, armed Klansmen began gathering outside. At about 10:30 p.m., the police released the three, with the Klansmen still milling on the street. As the activists climbed back into their car and headed out of town, Deputy Price followed in a squad car. The Klansmen were close behind.

The next day the activists’ burned-out station wagon was found in the Bogue Chitto Swamp outside Philadelphia. There was no sign of the three men. Their disappearance spurred an international media frenzy and a massive search. Even President Johnson got involved, consoling the activists’ families and ordering FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to lead the search. The President also ordered Hoover to take down the Mississippi Klan—once and for all.

Naturally, the Commission had the situation covered on all sides. Just before his departure from the Ohio training seminar, Agent X had reported that student activists had gotten word of the disappearances and were being flooded with phone calls and telegrams from relatives urging them to withdraw from the project. Commission agent Andy Hopkins had rushed to Philadelphia to monitor events and to shadow the FBI. A former FBI man himself, Hopkins reported that the town was abuzz with rumors that “these subjects met with foul play either while in custody of the sheriff or shortly after their release.”

A few days later Hopkins reported more talk around town: “There are rumors that there is a KKK in Philadelphia and some prominent citizens are members of the Klan.” Despite the talk, Hopkins maintained the view of many locals, who insisted the incident was a publicity stunt designed to grab headlines. Hopkins also complained that FBI agents were elbowing state investigators out of the probe and strong-arming suspects for information. A couple weeks into the investigation, however, Hopkins conceded that the FBI tactics were getting results—particularly their round-the-clock surveillance of suspected Klansmen and their willingness to dole out tens of thousands of dollars for information.

The search for the missing men went on for six weeks. The FBI dragged swamps and searched woods. The Mississippi Highway Patrol kept watch across the state in the event that the missing men showed up unexpectedly. The Jackson
Clarion Ledger
speculated that the three “agitators” were probably in “Cuba or another Communist area awaiting their next task.” Then the speculation ended. On August 4, 1964, 44 days after the civil rights workers were last seen alive, FBI agents dug up their bodies, buried deep into an earthen dam on a secluded farm outside Philadelphia. Commission agent Hopkins supplied his bosses with a hand-drawn map showing the burial site, noting that the bodies were discovered 14 feet down.

The tragic discovery put a worldwide spotlight on Klan violence in Mississippi. But as the headlines and television reports circled the globe, the violence and reprisals against civil rights advocates continued in the Magnolia State. Over the course of the summer, more than 40 black churches were burned and hundreds of activists were jailed. For their part, the Freedom Summer volunteers registered 1,600 new black voters, opened 37 Freedom Schools, and organized a biracial slate of candidates to challenge the Democratic Party regulars at the national convention that fall. The accomplishments were less grand than originally envisioned but significant nonetheless. The tide was turning.