The Lexington advertiser. [volume] (Lexington, Miss.) 1904-1985, 1961-03-16

action of the state-supported Sovereignty
Commission in alignment with t h
Citizens Council in a cheap game of
character-assassination involving a de-
fenseless University of Mississippi stu
dent.
What little confidence Mississip-
plans had left in the state Sovereign
ty Commission after it started max
ing $4,000 per month donations to the
private Citizens Council in defiance
of state constitutional authority, has
now vanished and the time has come
for the Commission to be abolished.
1T the privately-financed Citizens
Councils want to hire spies to go around
checking on people that is their affair
as long as they can get away with it. This
will be only as. long as it takes their men,
bership to become informed. We doubt
the majority of Citizens Council members
want their $500 per year dues used to
hire shoppers to go around spying on their
fellow Mississippians, in estate police
style like in the Communist countries.
But when the state Sovereignty Com
mission, supported with all of our tax
money to the tune of a $780, 900 budget,
starts cooperating with these spy activi-
ties of the Citizens Council, then it is
time to call an immediate halt. No state
agency should be allowed to unduly har-
ass any of it's citizens at any time, GER
tainly when there has been no crime COM
mitted = and even if the student had
been guilty as accused, he still would not
have been violating state laws.
Billy Barton, the University %journa-
lism junior involved, has called upon
Governor Ross Barnett to help clear up
this matter of a state agency (the
Sovereignty Commission) helping to cir
culate false reports about him, which have
hurt him in his school career and could
be of considerable handicap to his future.
Certainly Mr.. Barton should not be
content with anything less than a full
scale investigation Of all of the alleged
incidents and facts and responsibility
placed where it belongs.
And if the facts are what we think
they are, he will be due more than an
apology.
This is how the Sovereignty Com
mission became involved.
A spokesman for the Citizens Coun-
Gil (reported to be w. J. Simmons, editor
of 1.-THE Citizens Council" official month
ly publication of the Citizens Councils of
America) CAV the following report to
the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission
dated August II, 1860, and we quote:
This is a confidential report on a
matter | think will be of considerable in
terest to the Sovereignty Commission.
Today Mr.. Lufburrow, executive sec
Rotary of the States Rights Council of
Georgia, one of our affiliated statewide
organizations, phoned me from Atlanta
the following information:
A young man named Billy Barton of
Pontotoc, Mississippi, was actively in
volved in several lunch counter "sit-in''
demonstrations in Atlanta, including the
one at Rich's department store which
caused quite a disturbance.
Barton has been employed this sum-
on the staff of the Atlanta Journal.
He will be a senior student at the Univer-
sity of Mississippi this fall. He wants to
be editor of the student newspaper at
Ole Miss, and has the strong support of
DR.. James Silver along with several other
faculty members whose names are not
known at the present time.
Barton is a close friend of P. D. East,
publisher of the Petal Paper at Petal,
Miss We have a full file on East's activi-
ties, which are intended to be extremely
to the best interests of Missis-
sippi, to put it mildly, Barton plans to
cave Atlanta next week and visit East
at Petal or Hattiesburg before school
opens.
Ralph McGill, editor of the Atlanta
Journal, has taken Barton under his wing
has offered him a permanent posi-