A gripping and true tale of spying in the South

Bowers, R., Absher, E., & Henderson, W. (2010). Spies of Mississippi: The true story of the spy network that tried to destroy the civil rights movement. Washington, DC: National Geographic. In Spies of Mississippi, Rick Bowers brilliantly details the history of an organized (and covert) arm of the Mississippi state government called the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission. It’s mission? To prevent the integration of blacks and whites using tactics such as espionage, propaganda, and intimidation, thus protecting a white supremacist tradition almost two centuries old. Spies of Mississippi follows the agency from its inception in 1956 following Brown vs. the Board of Education to its dissolution in the early 1970’s.

The book begins with a foreword by Wade Henderson that immediately grabs your attention, writing, “You are about to encounter the spies and counterspies, agents and double agents, informants and infiltrators of the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission.” (Bowers, Absher, & Henderson, 2010, p. vii) That opening sentence immediately sets the tone for Bowers’ history of Mississippi during the early years of the civil rights movement in the South. Each short but informative chapter begins with an attention-grabbing sentence in bold that gets right to the point, and maintains a clear focus throughout each chapter. We meet all the primary leaders of the agency, such as Mississippi Governor J. P. Coleman, who signed the commission into existence and his successor, Ross Barnett, who won on a campaign based on protecting white southerners from “’integrationists, agitators, subversives, and race-mixers.’” (Bowers, Absher, & Henderson, 2010, p. 33) Throughout the 1950’s and early 60’s the agency’s espionage becomes increasing sophisticated, even recruiting black community members and newspapermen to report on their friends and neighbors. The result was that the commission operated in secrecy for almost 20 years, and the law that created was abolished in 1977.

Bowers generally allows the readers to draw their own conclusions by sharing the stories of men like Clyde Kennard and James Howard Meredith, who both experienced first hand the harsh reality of trying to break the university color barrier. We read of the “freedom riders” that made the cause of civil rights their own, sometimes paying the ultimate price. However, the author recommends that readers read the commission papers themselves and warns of “ghosts of the past” returning to haunt us as courts legislatures have become lackadaisical about enforcing integration laws that exist.

Included in the book are about 20 historical photographs with informative captions that create a context for middle and high school students. After the last chapter, Bowers includes a sort of epilogue that summarizes the lives of the commissions major players and includes some of the more intriguing documents found in the commission’s files. I personally found Spies of Mississippi an engrossing and informative read and would highly recommend this book to middle and high school students and their parents.

#civilrights #expository #history #middlegrades #highschool