WASHINGTON�For the 29th time in just 22 years, The Jackson Advocate�Mississippi�s most outspoken newspaper in behalf of Black empowerment�was vandalized by burglars, May 28. In a similar attack on Jan. 26, 1998, someone broke into the newspaper�s offices, doused the two-story building with gasoline and set it ablaze with Molotov cocktails.

Advocate publisher Charles Tisdale says the incidents are the result of his vocal opposition to a downtown privatization plan by Capital City Inc. (CCI). The plan disenfranchises Blacks by only permitting downtown homeowners to vote on matters related to a new business improvement district, he said.

According to a June 1 CCI press release, the Justice Department ruled a controversial 1996 vote on the business district complied with the Voting Rights Act. Leeland Speed, CCI board chairman, said CCI has helped make the business improvement district the city�s safest neighborhood.

Some observers predict that the outcome of the Jackson, Miss. dispute could affect other cities where Blacks are the majority population. The Black population in Jackson is now 60 percent. Whites "want to privatize downtown Jackson with a non-elected government-within-the-government," said Stephanie Parker-Weaver, head of the state chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).

On May 26, Mr. Tisdale appeared on a radio program with Ms. Parker-Weaver, saying he had copies of documents submitted by CCI to the Department of Justice reporting broad community support for their plan, including Mr. Tisdale�s forged signature. Two days later his office was vandalized.

The burglars did not steal equipment or other property, according to sources at the newspaper. They ransacked the publisher�s office and stole some of the paper�s financial records.

"We have been a newspaper that has vowed to tell the truth, whether it pinches or comforts," Mr. Tisdale told The Final Call. "That�s what we tried to do. But we are fighting a losing battle because of the economic nature of the attack now."

Other Black downtown business leaders support The Advocate. "I think it has a very critical relationship with the community," Al White, spokesman for Positive Innovations, a national educational consulting firm with offices in Jackson, told The Final Call. "It approaches issues and brings them to the forefront, in terms of hard questions that need to be answered."

The newspaper, he continued, is Jackson�s "conscience of what is not said but (what is) maybe thought of," by many people.

Former Advocate editor Ben Jealous is concerned that the Mississippi news media has not widely reported the story, even though, he says, Mr. Tisdale, his staff and family, literally "risk their lives" to publish the newspaper.

"It disturbs me that the press down there is so jaded, and that the public also is so jaded that his paper could be vandalized and burglarized, his personal files rifled through, including financial documents that were stolen, and editorial files that were very, very important and sensitive, and it received absolutely no coverage in Mississippi. To me, that�s the real story," said Mr. Jealous, now executive director of the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA)�the Black Press of America�in an interview.

"Was this a random burglary by some drug addicts? Probably not. The fact that the rocks that were used appear to have not come from the surrounding area suggests that there was premeditation. The fact that his files were gone through suggests that there�s a motive besides robbery of his property, and that deeply concerns me, as it should any member of the press."

The attacks appear to be nothing more than attempts at "intimidation," according to Mr. Jealous. "Intimidation of the press should not be tolerated under any circumstances," he insists. "It�s just one more reminder that the �Old South� and the �New South� continue to simultaneously occupy the same piece of property."

In past incidents, Mr. Tisdale has even been accused by political opponents of staging attacks on his own property.

"On Jan. 16,1982, two well known and notorious Klansmen shot hundreds of bullets into my office, which the FBI accused me of doing. However, accidentally, a prostitute had been standing in the alley and saw them do the shooting and wrote down their license plate number," the outspoken publisher said.

The two men were subsequently arrested and sentenced to long prison terms, but later their sentences were reduced to just eight months and 10 days in jail in an arrangement worked out by a police chief, who was himself suspected of murdering a civil rights worker and the Hinds County District Attorney at the time, according to Mr. Tisdale.

"So they really got away with murder," he said.

After Blacks stalled the CCI plan with a referendum in 1995, the business group which was founded by, among others, Wirt Yeager Jr.�the father of Mississippi�s modern Republican Party and a reputed architect of its "Southern Strategy" to be more attractive to white segregationists�redrew district lines and held a second referendum, opponents charge.

That prompted Mr. Tisdale and civil rights leaders to file a series of court suits. His supporters persuaded the Justice Department to intervene and rule that Mississippi needed federal approval for the district, and had to prove it did not dilute Black voting rights. That requirement, some believe, prompted someone to submit documents with forgeries of Mr. Tisdale�s signature.

Some Black and white business leaders in downtown Jackson accuse Mr. Tisdale of being obsessed with conspiracies.

"Many of the people who are talking are loose cannons," LeRoy Walker, a prominent Black owner of 10 McDonald�s franchises said in a published report at the time of the firebombing. "There�s all kinds of speculation, but that�s all it is, speculation. Nobody has any proof of who did this." Calls to CCI for comment were unsuccessful.