A Crazy World

8/22/1997

It’s a crazy world, but I live here…

Mac MacAnally, a friend and songwriter of some note, penned those words several years ago.  Since then, nothing has happened to prove him anything less than prophetic.  I was reminded of Mac this week when I read an article about the MIssissippi Sovereignty Commission.  Mac and I grew up near the shores of Ol’ Man River and shared many common experiences.

From the mid-1950s until 1972, an agency called the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission existed to protect the people of the state from “subversives.”  Actually, that’s a nice way to say the state government spied on its citizens to make sure they were living the good, clean, segregated life.  The commission was a secret…whispered about by many, but known about only by a chosen few.  Several years ago, under the Freedom of Information Act, the commission was officially acknowledged.  Bits and pieces were made public.  Some of this information was used to convict the murderer of Medgar Evers…documented in the movie, Ghosts of Mississippi.

All of the documents kept by the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission are about to be made public…including the names of those “sympathizers” who were spied upon and the informants who provided information.  Every person mentioned is being notified before the documents are made public.  Why are you reading about this in a Network 40 Editorial?

Because my name is supposedly listed in the documents as one who was sympathetic to the Civil Rights movement.  I was spied upon.

I find it amusing that anyone would bother spying on my “activities” as an elementary school child and teenager.  When I found the reasons why I was listed as a “sympathizer,” it became downright comical.

My parents, as most middle class families in Mississippi in the 1960s, had a house-keeper.  Lela Maye Woodson most definitely “kept” our house.  More often than not, it was Lela Maye whose approval I sought instead of my parents.  To say she “raised” me is not much a stretch.

Lela Maye had two sons and two nephews that she often brought with her to my home.  Nearly every afternoon, I was in the side yard playing some kind of sport with the Woodsons.  They played hard.  In that yard, the Woodsons didn’t teach me the difference between black and white.. I learned black and blue.  All four went to college on football scholarships and two made it in the NFL.

I recall several of the neighborhood boys objecting to playing with “coloreds.”  I didn’t.  I was always on their team and we generally won.  It was by ball…my yard…end of discussion.

I was branded a possible future subversive by the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission at the tender age of eight.  I wonder who turned me in?

Probably my brother.  He hated to lose.

In hindsight, I guess the commission was accurate in their assessment.  Who knows why…maybe through Lela Maye’s constant singing…but I was drawn early on to R&B music.  I used to lay awake late at night under the covers in my bed, tuning my little transistor to WLAC in Nashville and listening to the latest R&B songs spun by Big John R.  After he signed off, I spun the dial to XERF in Del Rio, Texas and the famous Wolfman Jack.

Something must have happened.  Years later, I was working the night shift on WRBC in Jackson.  The “RBC” in the call letters stood for Rebel Broadcasting Company and the station signed off every night with “Rebel Rouser” so you can understand it was no favorite of the Civil Rights movement.

I didn’t care.  I just liked R&B music.  So I played it…a lot of it.

My generation loved the music…of course.  I was a favorite on the campus of Jackson State University…the all black college located a few miles…and 100 years…away.

The Ku Klux Klan, however, wasn’t amused.  I got calls nearly every night from some redneck who objected to the type of music I was playing.  I wasn’t  worried.  I was young, cool and bulletproof…until one particular Friday.

The station was located on the outskirts of town, isolated in a huge field.  The control room was a fishbowl…I could see out, but others could also see in.  Since the station signed off at 1 am, I was alone in the building.

Just before midnight, I go another crank call from a particularly intelligent inbred who identified himself as an official member of the K.K.K. I asked what Kate Smith song he wanted to hear, then hung up.  He called right back.  “Boy,” he hissed, “if you don’t stop playin’ that music, we gonna fix you up.”  I told him to take his sexual aggressions out on his favorite farm animal and turned up Aretha.

A short time later, I noticed a glow coming from outside.  There, on the front lawn of the station, was a burning cross.

I called the police…who probably set the fire to begin with…and waited.  In the meantime, I went on the air live and described the scene.  Fortunately, a large group of Jackson State students came down to the station in a show of support. We even roasted marshmallows before sousing the flames.

This, according to the official who called, is duly noted in the documents set for release.  I was contacted because those who are mentioned may petition to keep their names from becoming a part of public record.  I don’t have a problem being labeled as a supporter of the Civil Rights movement in Mississippi, proud of it in fact…though I like the term “subversive” much better.

And I wondered why I didn’t get elected when I ran for Congress.

“It’s a crazy world, but I live here and if you can hear me singing, so do you.  I’m turning on my nights lights feeling satisfied that there’s nothing anyone of us can do…no there is nothing any one of us can do.”