Segregation - Era Agency's Files Unsealed

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: August 4, 2005

Filed at 9:56 a.m. ET

MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- The final documents have been unsealed from a segregation-era state agency that secretly tracked the activities of civil rights workers and suspected subversives, including a white teenager who was dating a black man.

Kept under seal by a federal court order to protect juveniles named in its documents, the last four files of the Alabama Legislative Commission to Preserve the Peace were made public this week by state archivists.

The commission looked into a wide range of events during the civil rights era, ranging from lunchroom brawls between black and white students in city schools to suspected communists making ''frequent trips to the Iron Curtain countries.''