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Alabama State Sovereignty Commission

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The Alabama State Sovereignty Commission was a government agency established in the U.S. state of Alabama to combat desegregation, which operated from 1963 to 1973.[1] The agency doubled as an intelligence network, and kept files on civil rights activists.[2]

History

The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission was founded in 1956, and was the organizational template for the Louisiana State Sovereignty Commission, and the Alabama State Sovereignty Commission.[3]

In 1963, the Alabama State Sovereignty Commission was established with a seven member board led by Alabama Governor George Wallace and Bull Connor. It was budgeted $50,000 USD and exempted from public records laws.[4] The Alabama Legislative Commission to Preserve the Peace (Commission to Preserve the Peace) was established by the Alabama Legislature the same year.[5] Wallace appointed members J. Kirkman Jackson, James Hardin Faulkner, and Joseph S. Meade, all lawyers from Birmingham; and Jack Giles Sr., a Huntsville lawyer; state senator Walter Givhan of Dallas County, Alabama; and C. Herbert Lancaster of the Alabama Citizens Council movement; as well as St. Clair News-Aegis newspaper publisher Edmund R. Blair.[6] Blair had campaigned for Wallace.[7]

The Commission acquired photographs of the Montgomery Rights March held in March 1965.[8] The film production agency, Keitz & Herndon (Rod Keitz and Larry Herndon) produced a film about the march for the Commission, titled State of Alabama (1965).[9] Journalist Bryan Lyman writing in the Montgomery Advertiser in 2019 described the film as "bizarre and offensive mix of conspiracy theories, endless crowd shots and racist caricatures of prominent civil rights leaders, including Rev. Martin Luther King Jr."[5] The Alabama Department of Archives and History holds the film.[5] The 1987 film "Eyes on the Prize" includes an excerpt from the film.[5]

The Commission published the Sovereignty Commission Bulletin. The first issue headline read, "Ben Brown is Dead, Is Law Enforcement Also Dead?" (published July 1968), Brown had been an activist.[1][10]

In 1970, the Commission produced an 11 page voting guide.[11] The University of South Alabama holds archival materials about the agency.[12]

Filmography

References

  1. ^ a b ""Sovereignty Commission Bulletin," publication of the Alabama State Sovereignty Commission. Sovereignty Commission Bulletin, Volume 1, Number 1". Alabama Department of Archives and History.
  2. ^ "Alabama Compiling Files On Civil Rights Advocates". The New York Times. February 17, 1964.
  3. ^ Katagiri, Yasuhiro (September 18, 2009). The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission: Civil Rights and States' Rights. University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 9781496801258 – via Google Books.
  4. ^ Gray, Jeremy (October 5, 2013). "Alabama Sovereignty Commission formed with sweeping powers, no public oversight (Oct. 5, 1963)". al.com.
  5. ^ a b c d e Lyman, Brian (February 2019). "'State of Alabama:' The racist anti-Selma film, and the secret state commission that funded it". Montgomery Advertiser.
  6. ^ Gray, Jeremy (December 21, 2013). "7 people named to Alabama Sovereignty Commission (Dec. 21, 1963)". al.com.
  7. ^ "Edmund R. Blair, Editor And Publisher, Passes" (PDF). PellCityLibrary.com. St. Clair News-Aegis. April 13, 1972.
  8. ^ "Selma to Montgomery Rights March photographs, 1965". WorldCat.
  9. ^ a b "Invoice from Keitz & Herndon, Inc., for work done on a film about the Selma-to-Montgomery march, which was produced by the Alabama Sovereignty Commission". Alabama Department of Archives and History.
  10. ^ Mitchell, Jerry. "History: Ben Brown, 2 students killed at JSU". The Clarion-Ledger.
  11. ^ State Voting Handbook. Alabama State Sovereignty Commission, State of Alabama. 1970.
  12. ^ "Alabama State Sovereignty Commission, 1963-1978". University of South Alabama Libraries.
  13. ^ Katagiri, Yasuhiro (January 6, 2014). Black Freedom, White Resistance, and Red Menace: Civil Rights and Anticommunism in the Jim Crow South. LSU Press. ISBN 9780807153147 – via Google Books.
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