This analysis summarizes and reflects on the following research: Whitlinger, C. (2022). From truth commission to truth project: The evolution of Mississippi’s incomplete truth commission, 2005-2010. The International Journal of Transitional Justice, 16, 422-438.
Talking Points
- Truth commissions were initially used as a tool in the immediate aftermath of a violent conflict or during political transitions but, as their popularity surged in the 1990s and early 2000s, they began to be applied to contexts within established democracies to address historic harms and injustices.
In the case of Mississippi’s incomplete truth commission (2005-2010):
- “Cognitive resources,” meaning local organizers’ understanding of truth commissions, “are a critical, and often overlooked, component of truth commissions’ infrastructure.”
- Local organizers constructed an understanding of the state’s history of Jim Crow and racial violence as analogous to Apartheid South Africa, initially leading them to advocate for a South African-style truth commission in Mississippi.
- Following a visit to South Africa, local organizers questioned the suitability of a truth commission in Mississippi, causing them to abandon calls for one in favor of a decentralized truth-telling project.
- A decentralized, deconstructed truth process may be more suitable in established democracies where the political timing is less urgent and civil society groups are likely to be the primary organizers.
Key Insight for Informing Practice
- In the U.S., achieving racial justice and resisting authoritarianism are inextricably linked. Truth-telling about the historic and widespread harms of racial violence—whatever form that truth-telling takes to best respond to its local context—is critical to countering growing authoritarianism.
Summary
In the 1990s and early 2000s, truth commissions proliferated as a mechanism for transitional justice. Truth commissions were initially used as a tool in the immediate aftermath of a violent conflict or political transitions but, as their popularity surged, they began to be applied to contexts within established democracies to address historic harms and injustices. Applying truth commissions in such contexts comes with its own set of challenges, including those related to the practical matter of implementation. Claire Whitlinger is interested in looking at incomplete truth commissions and the lessons that emerge from understanding why some truth commissions fall short of stated goals. She examines a proposed truth commission in Mississippi, USA, by “reconstructing a five-year process between 2005 [and] 2010,” during which the truth commission was proposed, developed, and then abandoned by local organizers. She identifies economic and political challenges that can impede truth commissions and finds that “cognitive resources,” meaning organizers’ understanding of truth commissions, “are a critical, and often overlooked, component of truth commissions’ infrastructure.”
Truth commissions were billed as the “standard solution to the problem of transitional justice” by global human rights practitioners following democratic transitions in Latin America in the 1990s. This created a rationalized myth that advanced claims about truth commissions without much empirical evidence—for instance that truth-telling results in reconciliation or prevents future violence1—aiding the widespread application of truth commissions in a wide variety of contexts. International and intergovernmental institutions also played a role in the popularity of truth commissions. Interactions between international and local actors interested in human rights and transitional justice facilitated the spread of truth commissions. Through these interactions, local organizers embraced the idea of truth commissions because of perceived “cultural and historical similarities” between their context and historical cases.
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Truth commissions: |
“temporary bodies officially sanctioned to investigate patterns of past violence.” (Hayner, P. (2011) Unspeakable truths: Transitional justice and the challenge of truth commissions. Routledge, New York.) |
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Rationalized myth: |
“a set of ideas that guides the practices, policies and operations of state institutions and other actors, independent of their efficiency.” |
In the case of Mississippi’s truth commission, local organizers constructed an understanding of the state’s history of Jim Crow and racial violence as analogous to Apartheid South Africa. Two events in Mississippi catalyzed the call for a truth commission—the document release in 1998 from the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission that revealed the “authoritarian tactics” used to maintain racial segregation in Mississippi and the 2005 conviction of Edgar Ray Killen for his role in the “Mississippi Burning.” In the aftermath of these events, local organizers convened the Mississippi Coalition for Racial Justice. The Coalition secured funding, and funders made connections between local organizers and global human rights and transitional justice practitioners who “reinforced the salience of the South African model for Mississippians.”
From 2005 on, local organizers faced three challenges in establishing a truth commission. First, the organizers faced a challenge of political timing—whereas previous truth commissions had found opportune timing during political transitions to take hold, “truth commissions in long-standing democracies must cultivate the political imperative for truth telling through other means.” While the Killen conviction catalyzed the movement for a truth commission, other events, like the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, delayed its establishment. Second, organizers struggled to adequately educate the public on the scope and purpose of a truth commission, described as a challenge of conceptualization. Third, local organizers visited South Africa in 2009 to learn more about its truth commission. The visit had the unintended effect of raising doubts in the organizers’ minds on whether the South African truth commission model was applicable to Mississippi, as they began to acknowledge the historical differences between the cases—creating a challenge of suitability with the truth commission model.
The visit to South Africa strongly influenced local organizers in Mississippi to reconsider their approach. They feared that “a truth commission would come and go without making substantive change” and wanted to create an approach “that could be sustained and made available to Mississippi communities when they were better able to engage their history of racial violence.” Whitlinger refers to this change as a “cognitive challenge,” arguing that it was “the final breaking point,” which effectively ended the truth commission. Despite the public launch of their efforts in 2009 with growing public support and funding, local organizers abandoned the idea of a truth commission and announced a “new phase of work.” This entailed “a decentralized effort that [included] scholarly research and the collection of oral histories from across the state [that would] populate new civil rights curricula being developed for public schools, expand historical knowledge in the state, [and] identify communities interested in pursuing reconciliation work.” Later, in 2015, organizers retroactively described this process as a “deconstructed” truth commission.
Whitlinger concludes by describing this process as an incomplete truth commission but suggests that even incomplete truth commissions can still have “important political and social effects,” by facilitating new relationships among local and international actors and “mobilizing civil society actors in the pursuit if truth telling.” She identifies the cognitive resources of organizers—how they understand the purpose of a truth commission and its suitability across historical cases—as a critical component of a truth commission process. Finally, she suggests that the Mississippi case provides important insights for truth-telling in “non-transitional settings.” A decentralized, deconstructed truth process may be more suitable in established democracies where the political timing is less urgent and civil society groups—rather than state actors—are likely to be the primary organizers.
Informing Practice
This research glances at an ugly, despicable, and yet unresolved chapter in U.S. history: Jim Crow in the American South, which institutionalized white supremacy and the systematic discrimination against and oppression of Black Americans. While Jim Crow was officially dismantled during the Civil Rights Era, its legacy—and that of chattel slavery before it—manifests today in continued racial inequality. For example, look at economic disparities and discrimination against Black Americans. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released a series of data visualizations on the racial wealth gap, a measurement of disparities in wealth among racial groups. It revealed growing disparity between Black and white families. For example, the median income gap between Black and white families of the same size has increased from $23,700 in 1970 to $33,000 in 2018.
With this context in mind, consider a Trump campaign plan to “dramatically change the government’s interpretation of Civil Rights-era laws to focus on ‘anti-white racism’ rather than discrimination against people of color,” as reported by Axios earlier this year. The Axios report detailed the legal groundwork in motion to reverse economic equity programs targeting high profile companies and organizations, in addition to widespread conservative backlash against diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. There are significant parts of the U.S. public that believe people of color are unfairly advantaged over white people. 58% of Trump supporters believe that to be the case, according to polling data from 2023. This is part of a larger shift towards authoritarianism in support of another Trump presidency, evident in materials from Project 2025 (much of which targets racial justice and DEI programming).
This research reveals important lessons for how truth-telling can be a tool for achieving racial justice and combating authoritarianism. In the U.S., achieving racial justice and resisting authoritarianism are inextricably linked. Racial authoritarianism has been a characteristic of U.S. politics throughout the country’s history. The Jim Crow South was an authoritarian form of government for Black people. Due to this particular history, there is a deep reservoir of knowledge about authoritarianism and how to resist it right here in the United States, as appealing is it might be to look beyond our borders for knowledge on combating authoritarianism. This research advises that we look to local organizers as leaders and as a critical resource for navigating forward progress. Appreciating how the Civil Rights movement operated in resistance to Jim Crow—or how the Black Lives Matter movement highlighted discriminatory policing—is an incredible source of information for combating authoritarianism today.
In addition, the outcome of any truth-telling process should be accessible to the public and oriented towards substantive change. In this research, local organizers in Mississippi learned the potential shortcomings of implementing a South African-style truth commission and, instead, opted for a variety of truth-telling initiatives adapted to the local context. Importantly, these initiatives were created with public access and use in mind. Historical storytelling and commemoration are important to truth-telling as they help to establish a narrative and understanding of collective history, which may eventually filter down into public school curriculum, museums, and other memorial sites.
In short, telling the truth about racial violence—revealing the ways that authoritarianism is not new to the U.S. and can be successfully challenged, and doing so in a way that is widely accessible—is an important part of a whole-of-society approach to making progress towards justice, peace, and democracy.
Questions Raised
- How do peacebuilders, racial justice activists, or global human rights or democracy practitioners encourage a country steeped in toxic political polarization to tell the truth about historic and modern-day racial harm and injustice?
- Is telling the truth sufficient to counter the subversion of civil rights that is currently bolstering growing authoritarianism?
Continued Reading
Miler, Z. (2024, April 11). The impossible necessity of racial justice in transitional justice. The International Journal of Transitional Justice, 18(1), 150-161. https://academic.oup.com/ijtj/article/18/1/150/7644102
Thompson, A. (2024, April 1). Exclusive: Trump allies plot anti-racism protections—for white people. Axios. Retrieved June 8, 2024, from https://www.axios.com/2024/04/01/trump-reverse-racism-civil-rights
International Center for Transitional Justice. (2022, December). Truth, reconciliation, and redress for racial injustice in the United States: Insight from experiences of commissions around the world. Retrieved June 8, 2024, from https://www.ictj.org/resource-library/truth-reconciliation-and-redress-racial-injustice-united-states-insights
Quarcoo, A., & Husakovic, M. (2021, October 26). Racial reckoning in the United States: Expanding and innovating on the global transitional justice experience. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Retrieved June 8, 2024, from https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2021/10/racial-reckoning-in-the-united-states-expanding-and-innovating-on-the-global-transitional-justice-experience?lang=en
Parker, C.S., & Towler, C. C. (2019, May). Race and authoritarianism in American politics. Annual Review of Political Science, 22, 503-519. https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-polisci-050317-064519
Organizations
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU): https://www.aclu.org/
International Center for Transitional Justice: https://www.ictj.org/
Institute for Integrated Transitions: https://ifit-transitions.org/
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