|
BUILDING BRIDGES:
YOUR COMMUNITY AND LABOR REPORT presents a July 4th Special Program:
Unsealing
Mississippi's Past:
The Sovereignty Commission, Racism and State Terrorism
Produced
by Ken Nash and Mimi Rosenberg
The program starts out with
Frederick Douglas' oration on the Fourth of July read by Ossie Davis,
as well as a special civil rights montage mixed by WBAI's award-winning
producer Peter Bochan. After a 21-year court fight, Mississippi unsealed
124,000 pages of secret files from a state agency that used spy tactics,
intimidation, false imprisonment and other illegal methods against civil
rights workers during the 1950's to the 1970's. A result of these documents
seeing the light of day was the retrial of Samuel Bowers, former Imperial
Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan for arson and the murder of Vernon Dahmer.
We spoke with David Engridbretzen,
the Director of the Misssissippi ACLU; Rita Schwerner Bender, the widow
of slain civil rights activist Michael Schwerner; Michael Moore, the Attorney
General of Mississippi; and Vernon Dahmer, Jr., whose father burned to
death in the firebomb attack by the KKK. We discussed what Mississippi
withheld from public view since 1957.
Building Bridges: Your Community
and Labor Report is produced in the studios of WBAI in New York City
by Mimi Rosenberg and Ken Nash. Our National Edition is produced monthly
and distributed to over 35 public radio stations.
Click
below for each segment of our special African American History Month show:
|