After a series of meetings with publicity chief DeCell, Greene made good on his boast and formed a devil’s bargain with the Commission. He would publish its propaganda in his newspaper and keep tabs on the NAACP. The Commission would cover his travel expenses to out-of-state meetings and funnel money to him under the guise of subscriptions, advertising, and printing jobs.
Greene hammered the NAACP in his columns and editorials, condemning its “vindictive speeches” against “responsible white people” and began funneling information to the Commission. And he made a handsome side income. In 1958 alone, Greene received $3,200 from the Commission—more than $31,000 in today’s money.
Shortly after wooing and winning Greene, the spies scored an even bigger prize. Reverend Henry Harrison Humes—one of the most influential African-American ministers in the state—agreed to serve as a confidential informant. Rev. H. H. Humes was the longtime pastor of New Hope Baptist Church in Greenville, editor of the weekly Delta Leader, and president of the 387,000-member Baptist State Convention, the largest black Baptist organization in Mississippi. Now he was riding a circuit of black churches across the Mississippi River Delta and building a loyal following through his powerful oratory and moral decrees. Humes had significant influence over ordinary churchgoers, a powerful voice in church affairs, and plenty of contacts within the NAACP.
A conservative black preacher supporting segregation was rare but not completely unheard of in Mississippi at that time. White community leaders often bestowed special status on “Negro preachers” for keeping politics out of the pulpit and keeping their flocks focused on the rewards of the afterlife rather than the shortcomings of the here and now. Black ministers who toed the line received contributions to their church funds, special relationships with white community leaders, and even a voice in state affairs. Humes was cut from that cloth.
As an informant, Humes proved himself by providing intelligence on NAACP recruitment in his hometown of Greenville. His first check was for a modest $29.76 for “investigations.” A February 11, 1957, memo recommended paying him $150 to spy on other black preachers at an upcoming regional ministerial meeting in Atlanta, because his report “could alert us to local situations.” Now the preacher was in a position to ingratiate himself with the state, to undercut his rivals within the NAACP, and to make serious money.
Humes followed up the initial assignments with such detailed information and enticing leads that his handlers steadily upped his pay. Before long, the minister was receiving a $150 monthly salary and additional payments for special assignments. The 55-year-old preacher became the primary source of anti–civil rights intelligence in the Delta. He provided advance word on NAACP meetings, warnings of visits from out-of-state leaders, whispers of future actions, and the names and addresses of new members and aspiring leaders. Humes was so thorough that he even hired a stenographer to record NAACP meetings word for word. He mailed meticulous reports to the Commission office and frequently drove to Jackson to brief his handlers in person.
Then, in July 1957, everything changed. Greene and Humes were exposed. The Associated Press broke a story stating that two black leaders were pocketing under-the-table payments from a public agency dedicated to preserving segregation. The proof: state-issued checks made out to Greene and Humes from the Sovereignty Commission.
The civil rights community was outraged by the betrayal. NAACP leaders complained that their work to secure equal rights for ordinary people had been jeopardized by a couple of well-heeled Uncle Toms. Grassroots activists grumbled that they were going to jail for the cause while well-to-do community members were on the payroll of the jailers. The leadership of the NAACP fired back at the informants. NAACP executive director Roy Wilkins told a packed crowd of 600 people at the Mount Bethel Baptist Church in Gulfport that Greene and Humes were “quick to get their hands in the till.”
Speaking from the pulpit of the same church in Gulfport, Humes denied the allegations. Addressing hundreds of people packed into the pews, he charged that the NAACP had “fallen into bad hands.” But Humes’s supporters were slow to rally to his defense, and his enemies were quick on the attack. NAACP members circulated a petition calling for his removal as president of the Baptist Convention. A coalition of black preachers issued a statement calling him “unworthy of the fellowship of the ministers of the Protestant denominations in Mississippi.”
Deflated by the attacks and fearful of being exposed again by reporters, Humes cut back on his spying and stopped traveling to Jackson to file reports. Instead he met his handlers at secret locations to plead for their support in clearing his name. He became consumed by the vendetta against him and depressed about his fall from grace.
Then, one night while driving home from a friend’s house, Humes started to feel sick. Concerned that his condition was worsening, he made his way to a segregated medical clinic to be examined. While waiting to be tended to, the minister went into a seizure, suffered a heart attack, and died. The next day Humes’s Commission contact sent a memo to Governor Coleman. It read, “The death of Rev. Humes has cost us one of the most influential Negroes we have had working on our behalf.” Later, the agent drove to the minister’s house in Greenville and, unbeknownst to the grieving family, slipped into Humes’s office “to remove all files dealing with the Sovereignty Commission.”
The exposure of the black informants lifted a curtain on the state’s secret spy network. Now, NAACP leaders were keenly aware of the dangers posed by those curious men in suits who had been jotting down the tag numbers of cars parked outside their meeting places. Civil rights activists began taking steps to protect their confidential documents and calling out suspected snitches in their meetings. For its part, the Commission quickly replaced Humes with one of his followers and added more informants—white and black—to its intelligence pipelines. As for Greene, he weathered the storm and continued informing and publishing propaganda. The two sides were poised for conflict, and there was more controversy bubbling up from the rich, black Mississippi River Delta.
The Mississippi River Delta is a study in contrast. The vast stretches of green and white cotton fields are interspersed with eerie, moss-draped cypress swamps. The white-pillared mansions of the plantation elite stand near the huts of the poor dirt farmer. The Delta is home to debutante balls and backroom gambling dens, ramshackle houseboats and majestic paddle wheelers. This sweltering, insect-ridden, and amazingly fertile stretch of bottomland forms, in the words of author James C. Cobb, “the most Southern place on earth.”
Back in the 1860s, hundreds of thousands of slaves worked the vast cotton fields. They were afraid to resist or to run for fear of being whipped, beaten, or sold away from their families. Each day, more black men, women, and children were delivered to the plantations by slave brokers, who purchased their human cargo in the bustling markets of New Orleans and Natchez and marched them in groups of about 30 for hundreds of miles to their oppressive new homes. The seemingly endless supply of slave labor and a ravenous demand for cotton fueled a robust economy dominated by wealthy planters, powerful politicians, and influential businessmen.
The legacy of slavery, the grip of poverty, and widespread illiteracy made it virtually impossible for civil rights workers to organize effectively in the Delta prior to the 1950s. The small cotton-processing towns and thinly populated enclaves seemed destined to be racially segregated and brutally oppressive for African Americans for generations to come. But by the late 1950s, in the hardscrabble river town of Clarksdale, change was in the air. Aaron Henry, president of the Coahoma County Chapter of the NAACP and executive secretary of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership, was organizing the black community. The mild-mannered activist was petitioning the local school board to integrate schools, urging the sheriff to crack down on the harassment of black voters, and demanding that newspaper editors