Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2000 12:24:45 -0700 (PDT)

Unsealing A Dark Past

Irvine -- This afternoon's edition of Subversity, a public affairs program on KUCI, 88.9 FM in Orange County, Calif., features a syndicated program from WBAI, the Pacifica station in Manhattan, on "Unsealing Mississippi's Past: The Sovereignty Commission, Racism and State Terrorism."

The show airs from 4-5 p.m. today on KUCI, 88.9 FM and is Web-cast on kuci.org/listen.html.

This program, courtesy of WBAI's "Building Your Bridges: Your Community and Labor Report," looks at how racism was institutionalized in the state for several decades through the 1970s by a group created by the legislature, the Sovereignty Commission, that engaged in spying and violence against African Americans and their allies in the civil rights struggle, based on documentation now finally made public.

URL of Sovereignty Commission archive lawsuit: www2.msaclu.org/ma/sover/SOVREG.html.

..............

Details of the show follow:

http://www.igc.org/wbai-labor/mississippi.html (RealAudio files
available) 

BUILDING BRIDGES: YOUR COMMUNITY AND LABOR REPORT:

                    Unsealing Mississippi's Past:
   The Sovereignty Commission, Racism and State Terrorism

Produced by Ken Nash and Mimi Rosenberg  

 The program starts out with Frederick Douglas' oration on the Fourth of
July read by Ossie Davis, as well as a special civil rights montage mixed
by WBAI's award-winning producer Peter Bochan. After a 21-year court
fight, Mississippi unsealed 124,000 pages of secret files from a state
agency that used spy tactics, intimidation, false imprisonment and other
illegal methods against civil rights workers during the 1950's to the
1970's. A result of these documents seeing the light of day was the
retrial of Samuel Bowers, former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan for
arson and the murder of Vernon Dahmer.

 We spoke with David Engridbretzen, the Director of the Misssissippi ACLU; 
Rita Schwerner Bender, the widow of slain civil rights activist Michael
Schwerner; Michael Moore, the Attorney General of Mississippi; and Vernon
Dahmer, Jr., whose father burned to death in the firebomb attack by the
KKK. We discussed what Mississippi withheld from public view since 1957. 

 Building Bridges: Your Community and Labor Report is produced in the
studios of WBAI in New York City by Mimi Rosenberg and Ken Nash. Our National 
Edition is produced monthly and distributed to over 35 public radio
stations.
 
.....................

 Daniel C. Tsang Host, Subversity, now Tuesdays, 4-5
p.m. Host, Alternative News, now Fridays, 5-6 p.m.
KUCI, 88.9 FM [Live links at: http://kuci.org/listen.html]
 selected shows available as RealAudio files
URL: http://kuci.org/~dtsang/
E-mail: dtsang@kuci.org
Daniel Tsang, KUCI, PO Box 4362, Irvine CA 92616
also check out:
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especially: 
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