Louisiana Voice

The MISSISSIPPI SOVERGEINTY COMMISSION, which came into being by act of the state legislature on March 29, 1956, was created in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision as a desperate attempt to stave off racial integration.

In January 1977, a bill was introduced to officially abolish the commission, even though it had ceased functioning four years earlier. The bill also called for the destruction of all the commission’s records. But the bill that was ultimately passed instead called for records to be preserved, but sealed, until 2027.

Litigation over release of the records by the American Civil Liberties Union, initiated in 1977, eventually resulted in a partial release in 1998 and by 2002, the Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH) had provided an online full text version of commission records.

All this is to say while that the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission got a lot of media coverage because of the legal battle and the eventual release of its records, Louisiana once had its own State Sovereignty Commission, formed four years after and modeled on Mississippi’s commission but which received far less notoriety.

The Louisiana commission and its companion Joint Legislative Committee on Segregation published an inflammatory BROCHURE titled “Don’t be Brainwashed! We Don’t Have To Integrate Our Schools!” The word “Brainwashed” ran diagonally down the front of the brochure.

The brochure then listed a six-point plan to protect what it described as the “American way of life.” Heading the list was a call to “Resist all attempts of subversive groups to brainwash you into believing that all is lost, that we now have no choice in the matter, that integration is inevitable.”

SEVERAL BOOKS that came down hard on the side of states rights and which were PROMOTED by the Louisiana Sovereignty Commission included:

• 50 Sovereign States or Federal Districts? (author unknown);
• Legislative Reapportionment is Strictly Our Business (author unknown);
• Amending the U.S. Constitution – How? (author unknown);
• The Unsolid South (author unknown);
• We the People (author unknown);
• Voting Rights and Obligations, the Louisiana Program (author unknown);
• The Hamburger Case (author unknown);
• Why We Should Support Our Police and Other Law Enforcement Officers (author unknown);
• The Plaquemine Story: A Question of Law and Order by E. Monnet Lanier;
• Can America Recapture Americanism? by Clarence Albert Ives;
• James J. Kilpatrick: Salesman for Segregation by William P. Hustwit;
• The Southern Case for School Segregation by James J. Kilpatrick;

Several writers and speakers were promoted by the commission, among them Frank Voelker’s address before the Select Judiciary Committee entitled “The Role of the Federal Judiciary.” Nowhere in any of the commission’s promotional material was there any reference to a person’s right to dignity, his right to vote or his right to a decent education.

The Louisiana commission even produced a PROPAGANDA FILM in 1961that purported to illustrate the peaceful coexistence of black and white Louisiana citizens. It offered the dubious argument that “even though black and white citizens use separate facilities in Louisiana, those facilities provide equitable services, including schools and libraries.” Nothing could have been further from the truth.

It went on to claim that additionally, “both races also have an equal opportunity to use state services” (another distortion of reality). The film closed with then-Gov. Jimmie Davis speaking out against “federal interference in the way of life within the state.”

So, what, exactly, is the point of this mini-lesson in Louisiana history? Why bring this long-buried, mostly forgotten state embarrassment up at this late date?

No reason other than to ruminate on current efforts by people like State Rep. Ray Garofalo, Jr. (R-Chalmette) to revamp history courses at the elementary, secondary and university levels.

It would be one thing if he were a lone voice in the wilderness crying out against his perception of skewed history, but unfortunately, that’s not the case. There is a concerted, synchronized effort by Republicans in general and people like Garofalo in particular to soften America’s history to the point of TEACHING only the “good things about this country” (his words, not mine).

I’ve got no problem with teaching the good things about this great country. It’s given me, a poverty-stricken kid the opportunity to improve my living standard and I’m appropriately grateful for that. And anyone who knows me will tell you it wasn’t given to me. I’m all in on the work ethic.

But at the same time, there are those for whom the so-called American Dream is just that – a dream, a fantasy. Inferior schools and social environments have doomed many to a lifetime of poverty subsistence through no fault of their own. A friend, an African-American, grew up in New Roads but his segregated school went only to the 10^th grade. He knew that was a sentence to a dead-end existence so, he moved in with relatives in North Baton Rouge in order to finish high school (a high school with 12 grades) and to attend college. Today, he’s a successful accountant. But he’s the exception.

And now Garofalo comes along to advocate censorship, for lack of a better description. He would control public school teachers, limiting what they can teach about the warts and blemishes that accompany all those good things about this nation. The attempted genocide waged against the only true natives of this land, one man’s owning another individual (yes, I know there were black slave-owners as well, so what’s your point? Slavery is slavery), the counting a black person as three-fifths a citizen for the purposes of the U.S. Census, the denial of the right to vote for women until well into the 20^th century, and a grossly unequal system of justice for the haves and have-nots, be they black, brown or poor whites.

Not satisfied to limit his suffocating policies to elementary and high schools, he also is conducting a frontal assault against colleges and universities who have the temerity to address the problems of racism that have been brought to the surface by an orange-haired, spray-tanned TV reality show personality.

Garofalo said in February he was concerned that conservative positions are getting short shrift on college campuses, being relegated, as it were, to a metaphoric back seat to white guilt trips because of a planned panel discussion at LSU on “white rage” against blacks.

That was before his more recent tirade against teaching about the Civil War, women’s suffrage, the civil rights struggle, and the treatment of Native Americans in the name of Manifest Destiny.

Sometimes the willingness to look back can give us the ability to look forward. Perhaps someday, the history hysteria of Garofalo, et al, will look as foolish and ill-advised as the monumental idiocy of the Mississippi and Louisiana sovereignty commissions.

And lest you think I’m being a tad overly-dramatic, do this: Step out of your comfort zone and try putting yourself in someone else’s position for a change. Close your eyes and imagine, for just a moment, that you are a black person whose right to vote is under attack – or worse, that you are a black man minding your own business while driving along I-20 in northeast Louisiana…