Text transcribed from caption: PC-32138 MISSISSIPPI CIVIL RIGHTS INQUIRY OPENS JACKSON, Miss. -- A long-proposed inquiry into denial of voting rights and the administration of justice to Negroes in Mississippi was opened in Jackson by the six-member U.S. Civil Rights Commission, which includes Father Theodore M. Hesburgh (right), president of the University of Notre Dame. The sessions were called to order by Dr. John A. Hannah (second from left), commission chairman and president of Michigan State University. Other commission members shown are Dean Erwin N. Griswold of Harvard University’s Law School and Mrs. Frankie Muse Freeman, associate general counsel of the St. Louis Housing and Land Clearance Authorities. Other members present, but now [sic] shown here, were Eugene Patterson, editor of the Atlanta Constitution and vice-chairman of the commission, and Robert S. Rankin of the department of political science at Duke University. One of the first witnesses to appear at the hearings was Mississippi Atty. Gen. Joe T. Patterson, who declared that state leaders were trying to deal with the civil rights issue “free of demagoguery.” Credit Must Read: RELIGIOUS NEWS SERVICE PHOTO (W-NY-2B-65-NBM)
