NATION/WORLD

Sovereignty
papers
released
Forty-year-old Mississippi com-
mission that fostered segregation
nveils documents
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - The secrets of
Mississippi's segregation enforcement agency spilled
from computer screens Tuesday, painting a picture of
petty, small-town espionage and alarming invasions of
individual privacy.
The Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, created
by a nervous Legislature in 1956, two years after fed-
erally ordered school integration, employed dozens of
agents and informants to ferret out gossip, tall tales
and, sometimes, facts about those involved in civil
rights and voter registration drives in the state.
Twenty-one years later, lawmakers tried to bury the
commission's transgressions by sealing its files for 50
years. But civil rights activists and the American Civil
Liberties Union sued to make them public.
It took 21 years more, but on Tuesday, with yel-
lowed newspaper clippings and well-thumbed reports
translated to computer files, anyone who cared to
stand in line at the Archives & History Department
could search the records.
Much that came to light were repetitious accounts
of ordinary daily doings. Any meeting of blacks or r
civil rights sympathizers was sure to produce a list of
license tag numbers of cars parked outside.
But some files are revealing in their intensity. The M
segregation gatekeepers were so disturbed when
Clyde Kennard tried to integrate the University of smoke rises from t
Southern Mississippi, for example, that they Mississippi in 1966
"unleashed investigators who dug up the most minute
details of his then 32 years. who disappeared J
A 37-page report compiled in December 1958 Their bodies were
shows the vacuum-cleaner approach used by dam.
Sovereignty Commission agents. Kennard's file Commission file
stands out in its detail, starting with his birth certifi- tigation completely
cate number. Agents sucked up information on virtu- ing county and sta
ally every facet of his life thereafter: high school and Documents spec
college grades, credit and work history, U.S. Army leads into the disa
records, his purchase of chicken feed, his mortgage Goodman and Jar
and a letter to the Hattiesburg American newspaper authorities at bein
advocating integration. unidentified infor
Criminal charges were even manufactured - os- In July 1964, N
session of illegal whiskey in a dry county --- to keep Rainey told the So
the "integration agitator" out of the university, to be arrested by t
Sovereignty Commission records released Tuesday deaths. Six months
show. Cecil Price, were b
The more segregationists feared a person, the deep- Eight klanspersc
er commission spies dug into his or her background, spiracy charges.
said David Ingebretsen, executive director of the charges in the
ACLU of Mississippi, who has studied hundreds of "Mississippi Burni
-pages of documents in the 21-year fight to get them In pursuing Kinr
opened. Van Landingham.,
"I think there's a correlation there" he said. "It (the interviewed Kenn:
Kennard file) certainly stands out as one of the more black pastors, ask
thorough investigations." National Associati
Another individual receiving intense scrutiny was People and specul
Michael Schwerner, one of three civil rights workers person interviewed
Americans head
south into suburbs


The Michigan Daily - Thursday, March 19, 1998 - 11A
Opinions range on
value of dg
treatments vs. prison

AP TO
he firebombed home of civil rights leader Vernon Dahmer after an early morning attack in
6-

une 21, 1964, in Neshoba County.
found 44 days later in an earthen
es paint a picture of a murder inves-
y dominated by the FBI, humiliat-
ite law officers.
ak of FBI bribes and threats to get
appearances of Schwerner, Andrew
nes Chaney, frustration from local
g kept in the dark, and claims by
mants about local tattlers.
Neshoba County Sheriff Lawrence
vereignty Commission he expected
the FBI for his involvement in the
s later, Rainey and his chief deputy,
behind bars.
ons went to prison on federal con-
The state never brought murder
case, which inspired the film
ng."
nard, commission investigator Zach
a now deceased former FBI agent,
card's former teachers and several
ing about his involvement in the
on for the Advancement of Colored
ating on his family tree, which one
d said included white ancestors.

"Confidential informant T-l" supplied Van
Landingham with information about Kennard's job
history.
Van Landingham also included his own opinions,
such as this summary of Kennard's debts compared to
his income: "He has shown no sense of responsibility
in meeting his obligations. This seems to be a charac-
teristic of the Negro race in general, as shown in the
extensive files of this organization."
Kennard tried to apply three times to Southern
Mississippi College, as the university was then
known. After the third rejection, on Sept. 15, 1959,
Kennard was arrested for illegal possession of liquor.
Sovereignty Commission records show whiskey
was planted in his car to keep him from enrolling in
the school. The Mississippi Supreme Court cleared
Kennard of the charge in 1990 - 27 years after he
died of intestinal cancer in Chicago.
The files seen Tuesday left the impression that
much of the commission's labor was little more than a
clipping service, clogged with readily available infor-
mation on individuals suspected of being communists
or threats to segregation.
Furthermore, indications have been clear since the
files were sealed that the records had been purged of
most evidence potentially incriminating to commis-
sion and the state.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Medical
treatment for drug addiction works
as well as treating diabetes or other
chronic diseases, dramatically
reduces crime and is a lot cheaper
than jail, says a study released this
week by bipartisan public health
experts.
But a separate survey indicates
that the public believes just the
opposite - that jail is best, while
support for drug treatment is drop-
ping.
That perception prompts the fed-
eral government to spend only 20
percent of the nation's $17 billion
drug-control budget to treat addicts,
a proportion the doctors' group con-
cluded should
increase.
"We've been Public Su.,
telling people to
'just say no' spending
when addiction
is a biological treatmenr
event," said Dr.
June Osborn of
the new Physician Leadership on
National Drug Policy, prominent
physicians and public health leaders
from the Clinton, Bush and Reagan
administrations that commissioned
the research from half a dozen uni-
versities.
"There must be a bridge between
what the public believes and the sci-
ence," added Dr. Lonnie Bristow of
the American Medical Association,
who is helping provide the data to
Republican congressional leaders
who control drug spending.
That's not to say medically treat-
ing the 14 million American alco-
holics and 6.7 million drug addicts
is a cure - many do relapse.
But the scientists concluded that:
Jailing a drug addict costs
$25,900 per year. A year of tradi-
tional outpatient drug treatment
costs $1,800, intensive outpatient
care costs $2,500, methadone treat-
ment for heroin users costs $3,900
and residential drug-treatment pro-
grams range from $4,400 to $6,800
a year.
Drug treatment can cut crime
by 80 percent, said Brown
University addiction director
Norman Hoffman. Brown researcher
Craig Love studied female substance
abusers who were in jail, and found
that 25 percent who underwent treat-
ment were later re-arrested, vs. 62
percent released without substance
abuse treatment.
A California study of 1,600 drug
abusers found their involvement in
drug sales, drug-related prostitution
and theft decreased threefold after
treatment.
Every dollar invested in drug
treatment can save $7 in societal and

...

medical costs, said former Assistant
Health Secretary Philip Lee.
Long-term drug treatment is as
effective as long-term treatment for
chronic diseases, said Dr. Thomas
McLellan of the University of
Pennsylvania.
One-year relapse rates for the dis-
eases and for addicts all are about50
percent, he said. Compliance with
therapy is similar, too: Less than
half of diabetics comply with their
therapy, less than 30 percent of asth-
ma and hypertension patients ,and
less than 40 percent of alcohol or
drug abusers.
* Drug treatment also helps soci-
ety's health, McLellan said. Heroin
users, for exam-
ple, are at huge
prt for risk of catching
and spreading the
in dru AIDS virus or
N .E hepatitis. A seven-
uroppW.a year study .,of
heroin addicts
found 51 percent
who never entered drug treatment
caught HIV during that period,:vs.
21 percent of treated addicts.
Yet, there is a severe shortage of
drug-treatment programs, the doc-
tors said.
About 15 percent of people who
need treatment get it. About seven
states don't offer any methadone
clinics for heroin addicts, and every
U.S. methadone clinic has a waiting
list.
Only between one in 20 and one in
five pregnant drug abusers can,,get
drug treatment because of too few
programs, inability to pay or too few
inpatient programs that will accept
the woman's other children, said
University of Pennsylvania's ,Dr.
Jeffrey Merrill.
The findings conflict with public
opinion.
An analysis of national suryeys
published yesterday in the Journal of
the American Medical Association
finds public support for increased
spending on drug treatment :has
dropped from 65 percent in 1990 to
53 percent in 1996.
In contrast, 84 percent ..of
Americans say the solution-is
tougher criminal penalties. Next on
the list are anti-drug educaton,
more police and mandatory drug
testing.
The physicians group has eltJed
early interest in the data from
Republican health and drug-polcy
leaders such as Sens. Jim Jefford of
Vermont and Orrin Hatch of Ufkh.
National drug policy chief Barry
McCaffrey also welcomed the data,
and will discuss it next week at a
conference on how to improve drug
treatment inside prisons.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Americans
are moving west and south, fattening
counties near such cities as Denver and
Atlanta, the Census Bureau says.
Colorado and Georgia each claim three of
the fastest-growing counties in the nation.
The biggest population jump from
1996 to 1997 was in Colorado's
Douglas County, which surged 12.9
percent. The steepest decline? That was
in Alaska's Ketchikan Gateway
Borough County, which lost 4.6 percent
of its residents.
The figures, released this week,
come from the Census Bureau's annual
estimates of population shifts in the
nation's 3,142 counties.
Demographic maps of counties in
many metropolitan areas are looking
like doughnuts, thinner than before in
the central core and denser in surround-
ing counties. The bureau cites
Minneapolis-St. Paul, Atlanta,
Nashville, Dallas-Fort Worth and San

Antonio as examples of this migration
to the suburbs.
Counties pay close attention to shifts
in population because numbers of peo-
ple - more here and fewer there -
drive the distribution of dollars from fed-
eral and state programs. By and large,
fewer people translates to less govern-
ment help. More people moving to a
county opens the gates a little wider.
Three of the fastest growing counties
in the United States are in booming
Colorado, according to the Census
Bureau. There are three more in Georgia
and one each in South Dakota, Nevada,
Virginia and Texas. All 10 counties are
located near metropolitan areas.
Douglas County, which witnessed
the largest percentage increase of any
county in America for the year, is part
of the Denver-Boulder-Greeley, Colo.
metropolitan statistical area. The coun-
ty has experienced more than 109 per-
cent growth since 1990.

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* Service Centers Corporation
4687 Washtenaw Avenue
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