[Excerts taken from from Pardon Unlikely for Civil Rights Advocate, the New York Times, Adam Liptak, May 4, 2006]
Haley Barbour, formerly the National Chairman of the Republican Party and now Governor of the State of Mississippi acknowledges that Clyde Kennard suffered a grievous wrong at the hands of state officials more than 45 years ago. But he says he will not grant a posthumous pardon to Mr. Kennard, a black man who was falsely imprisoned after trying to desegregate a Mississippi college.
The files of the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, the state's segregationist spy agency, show that killing or framing Mr. Kennard was openly discussed as preferable to allowing him to enroll at the college.
Aubrey K. Lucas, the director of admissions at the college when Mr. Kennard applied, recalled in an interview that it was the governor, J. P. Coleman, who decided against admitting Mr. Kennard.
That was a mistake, said Mr. Lucas, who went on to be president of what became the University of Southern Mississippi. "Kennard would have been the perfect person to integrate this university," Mr. Lucas said. "He didn't bring attorneys with him. He didn't bring the N.A.A.C.P. leadership."
Mr. Lucas said pardoning Mr. Kennard might cost Mr. Barbour a few votes.
"There are some people around here still," Mr. Lucas said, "who think we should be separate as races and who refuse to see the errors of our past. But I can't imagine it would be a factor in his re-election." More...
Above-Left: Clyde Kennard with his sister, Sara Tarpley, at O'Hare Airport in Chicago after his 1963 release from a Mississippi prison. He died that year. Above-Right: Haley Barbour speaking at the Council of Conservative Citizens Blackhawk Rally in Blackhawk Mississippi before state elections in 2005. The rally raised money for buses for local private schools. The CCC has been described as a white supremacist organization by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Anti-Defamation League, and the NAACP.
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