Mississippi Burning

2 Pages 586 Words

Mississippi Burning

During the civil rights movement the south was a highly controversial location for both blacks and whites. The movie Mississippi Burning displayed a town’s conflict between civil rights and racial discrimination. The film attempted to capture the atmosphere and emotional tension that the murders of the three civil rights activists created. Most of the debate surrounding the film has focused on disagreements of how it portrays key events in the history of the civil rights movement. The issues that are highly focused on are the presentation of the white southern men and women, the depiction of the F.B.I. agents’ process of capturing those at fault for the murder and the agents’ determination to fight for the civil rights cause.
The white southerners of Mississippi are illustrated as dirty, uneducated, racist monsters. This image is stereotypical of white southerners during the black civil rights movement. Without living through these sensitive times, there can only be speculation about what really happened down south, the image projected seemed to be exaggerated. This representation gave the impression that Mississippi had its own way of life, which included a harsh discrimination towards blacks. As described in the book The Strange Career of Jim Crow, by C. Vann Woodward, the northern society was given just as much credit for the horrible conditions the blacks were put under during the civil rights movement as the southern society. The wife of the deputy may have been coerced into the information she revealed but in my opinion there would have been more people willing to fight for justice then protect someone who committed such a heinous crime. The movie showing many of the towns’ people withholding the information only inflated the immoral picture created for southernism.
After an unsuccessful effort the F.B.I. to solve the murder case with due process of law, the agents try a few less questionable metho...