Former Sovereignty Commission member speaks out
By Billy Watkins
Keith Warren/The Clarion-Ledger
Horace Harned, a former state lawmaker and member of the state Sovereignty Commission, talks to reporter Jerry Mitchell on Feb. 20, 2007, in his home in Starkville. Harned served 24 years in the state legislature.
STARKVILLE  Horace Harned, 86 and going strong, spent 24 years in the Mississippi Legislature. He enjoyed the "games" of lawmaking, the power and prestige that went with it.
Harned is educated, well-read, articulate ... and a hard-line segregationist who says he is famous because "I'm the last person (in Mississippi) trying to stand up for constitutional government and state's rights."
He is one of the last surviving members of the now-defunct Sovereignty Commission, a secret segregationist spy agency headed by the governor. He served on it from 1964 through 1970. He also was a member of the Citizens' Council, created by white Mississippi professionals to preserve segregation.
He has been interviewed at his home by CBS, NBC, ABC's Nightline, The New York Times Magazine and a French television crew, among others. It's hard to say whether they come for his insight or to hear what just might pop out of his mouth next.
Such as: "Mississippi's in sad shape because we've got so many black officials," he says, his voice sagging as if his favorite puppy had gone missing. "Columbus has a black mayor. So does Jackson. And anywhere you've got a black mayor, you're going to have more crime. History teaches us that. Since a white man passed the laws on the books, why should blacks enforce them? That's kinda their feelings, I think."
And while the nation has applauded Mississippi's efforts in recent years to right past wrongs by reopening homicide cases from the civil-rights era - the most recent being the Jan. 24 arrest of 71-year-old James Seale for his alleged involvement in the kidnappings that lead to the 1964 slayings of African-American teenagers Charles Eddie Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee - Harned deems it senseless.
"It does nothing but stir up animosity," he says.
When asked about Edgar Ray Killen's conviction in 2004 for helping plot the 1964 murders of civil-rights workers James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman outside Philadelphia, Harned shakes his head.
"They came down here looking for trouble, and that's what they got," he says. "But, again, I don't believe in murder. They maybe could've gotten 'em out there and whipped 'em a little bit, but they shouldn't have murdered them. The Klan, they felt too much ... well, they were unreasonable killing those boys.
"But when you start bringing them cases up, it makes worldwide news and gives Mississippi a black eye. Mississippi will be held out specifically more than others. But it shouldn't have happened. I don't know ..."
After graduating from Mississippi State University in 1942 with a degree in geology, Harned served four years in the Air Force as an aerial photographer. He returned to run a plantation after leaving the service in 1946.
Harned's property joins that of Mississippi State football coach Sylvester Croom - the first African-American head football coach in Southeastern Conference history.
Harned is a die-hard Bulldogs fan and says he never had a problem with Croom's hiring. "Most of the players are black, anyway," he reasons.
If Harned's views appear complicated and filled with contradiction, they seem always to have been that way.
"We had many conversations, but Horace always thought he was right," says Robert Clark, the first African American elected to the Legislature in Mississippi since Reconstruction. "He had been raised to think a certain way, and that's what he believed.
"Around 1970, when I was proposing early childhood education and compulsory school attendance, Horace told me those were communist ideas. He said, 'You can't tell people what they should do with their children.' He was so far to the right that he was out of touch with most people who considered themselves to be right wing."
Although Harned wasn't "one of those ranting and raving segregationists," says Bill Minor, a longtime Mississippi political writer, "you certainly knew where he stood."
"When the three civil-rights workers were killed, Horace Harned came out and said, 'We don't support violence' - meaning the Citizens' Council," says David Sansing, history professor emeritus at the University of Mississippi. "But the problem is people like Harned created an environment in which people could commit acts of violence, knowing they wouldn't be apprehended, tried and convicted."
During a four-hour interview at his home, Harned says Mississippi is a long way from becoming a peaceful racial melting pot. "One thing's for sure - the white folks have to stick together," he says. "We've got blacks coming on, getting elected to the Legislature and as mayors. And they've worked hard and deserve that. But they have a different culture from ours. We have to let them have their culture, and we have to hope they will let us have ours.
"The Good Lord made us different for a reason. He's the judge, the best judge."
James Meredith's enrollment at the University of Mississippi in 1962, which broke the color barrier and sparked riots on the Oxford campus by angry white students, was a communist plot, according to Harned.
"The communists wanted to stir up trouble between the whites and the blacks, and they figured this was a good way to make us weak," Harned says. "They figured if they could destroy Christianity, they could destroy America. And they figured Mississippi was a good place to start because we had more blacks than most states.
"The battle continues. Today, the Marxists pit blacks against whites, Jews against Gentiles, poor folks against rich folks. And the country is more divided now than I've ever seen it. I thought the 9-11 bombings might wake people up, but that didn't last long."
He says the late civil-rights activist the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. "was a phony" and the annual holiday to remember his legacy "is the greatest farce perpetrated on an ignorant, uninformed, misinformed populace to solve a guilt complex and to oil a squeaky wheel."
