Spies of Mississippi

Each of these well known Americans is just one of the tens of thousands of individuals who were spied upon by the State of Mississippi during the struggle for civil rights. A little-known chapter of American history, this frightening world of anti-civil rights espionage is presented in the film SPIES OF MISSISSIPPI. Replete with eerie accounts of the informants, infiltrators, and agent provocateurs who worked in the shadows to undercut the movement, the film is personalized with the inspiring stories of relentless civil rights crusaders who lived under the ever-present shadow of the state spy apparatus.

The film uses exclusive interviews and rare historical footage, including segregationist propaganda films, newly uncovered documents, dynamic on-screen graphics and a powerful, original music score to bring the story to life. The chilling visuals include secret documents and surveillance photographs, including diagrams of Klan murder scenes sketched by state investigators and photos of teen-aged protestors with numbers scrawled over their faces to identify them as future targets. There are excerpts of investigative reports that discuss plans to discredit, undercut or even murder civil rights activists.

At the center of the film is an exploration of the connection between the state-run spy apparatus and several crucial events in the civil rights struggle, the most infamous being the murder of the three civil rights workers whose bodies were discovered buried under a dam. Their disappearance put the town of Philadelphia and the state of Mississippi at the epicenter of a national political crisis, an international media frenzy and an FBI investigation code named Mississippi Burning – made famous decades later by the 1988 movie that took its name. The movie portrays the events of that summer with a cast of characters of ignorant, racist rednecks, poor terrorized black field hands and fair-minded FBI agents on a quest for justice.

Now – with new information and insights – we reveal much more for the complexity and nuance behind the events, showing that the cast of characters was far more diverse and the behind-the-scenes maneuvering far more insidious. We show how the state’s secret, anti-civil rights spy agency played a pivotal role in the events surrounding the murders – and how its primary black infiltrator supplied intelligence that fell into the hands of the killers.

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