I was raised in Montana and was largely ignorant of the racial discrimination that was much more prominent in the southern states. All that changed for me when I accepted a call to spend a few years of my life doing service work in Mississippi and Louisiana from the summer of 1995 through 1997. I was told the change of location would be a culture shock, and that was an understatement. I met more African-American people in a day than I ever knew in my entire lifetime in Montana. I also met a lot of ignorant people who still carried with them a deep-seated prejudice that was taught to them by their parents and grandparents. Fortunately, even with the generational upbringing, that kind of thinking was slowly dying, and I can only hope it has gotten even better in the nearly thirty years since. To some, though, it will never go away, and there are still people out there who view their race as being superior to others and back that belief up with violent acts.
One of the areas in which I served was Philadelphia, Mississippi, and in that little city, there was a church, Mt. Nebo Baptist Church. Outside that building stood a small memorial, done up to look like a gravestone, that reminded all who passed by of the three civil rights workers who had been massacred back in 1964: Andrew Goodman, James Earl Chaney, and Michael Henry Schwerner. This memorial was a painful reminder that it wasn’t all that long ago when three young men, whose only intention was to promote equal rights, were killed in cold blood. As I stood looking at that visual reminder of darker times, I was moved. These were three young men who were more socially conscious than I had been, and it took actually being there where these things were taking place to get me to understand just how bad it was for many black people living in the South during that time. It’s a feeling I have never forgotten.
I first learned of the film Mississippi Burning on that day, too. My service companion knew of it and what that memorial was about, and we talked about it off and on for the remainder of the day. He mentioned the film, and it immediately went on my list of movies to seek out and watch. But my duties while in the South prevented me from seeing it at the time, and time went on, and I kept meaning to sit down and watch it but just never did. I remedied that last night and finally put it on. Memories of my time in the South came flooding back, and I found myself reflecting on the racism I personally experienced while living down there. When I was there in the 90s, what I mostly saw was the casual variety, the slurs, the stereotyping, and the distrust. Had I been Black, myself, I would have probably seen more. I worked closely with more than twenty other young men during the two years I was there, but only one of them wasn’t White, and he was Tongan from Southern California, so what I learned about the civil rights stuff I gleaned from the locals, most of whom were reluctant to even broach the subject with a young White man from the North.
In this case, the educational system failed me because, while we did tackle the subject of segregation, it was only glossed over like the public education system was embarrassed by it and wanted to pretend it was just a minor thing not worth spending time on. That was obviously not the case, and evidence of it was still there in the South in the 90s. An early shot of Mississippi Burning shows a segregated drinking fountain with a sign posted clearly stating one side is for colored people only, a single water pipe feeding both fountains. Those signs were gone when I lived there, but there were still duplicate fountains all over the place. When I first got down there, I didn’t know why. I learned quickly. A lot of painful history is still visible if you keep your eyes open and look for it. A lot of painful memories are still there among the people, too.
One thing that struck me as odd when looking into Mississippi Burning is that the film, while based on a real event, is fictionalized. This goes beyond the typical changing of the names to protect certain people. The location of the violence and later investigation has been altered to a fictional county, too. Some details of the investigation were unknown, including an individual who gave information to the FBI that led to the discovery of the bodies of the murdered activists. Screenwriter Gerolmo fabricated the details needed to piece all of this mystery together into a coherent script, and the results, while considered controversial for the many changes to the known facts of the case, are still powerful to watch. It’s hard watching a film that makes us confront the pure hatred of another man for no other reason than the color of his skin.
For those that don’t know what happened that night in 1964, three civil rights workers— two Jewish and one Black— went missing while in Mississippi organizing a voter registry for African Americans. The film sets things in fictional Jessup County, but it really happened in Neshoba County. This movie is about the investigation the FBI launched and the aftermath. In the film, agents Alan Ward (Willem Dafoe) and Rupert Anderson (Gene Hackman)— loosely based on real agents Joseph Sullivan and John Proctor— are sent in to investigate the disappearances. During their time there, they are harassed by locals, find that the local Black population is afraid to talk to them, and uncover a deep conspiracy linked to the local law enforcement. With the help of one woman, Mrs. Pell (Francis McDormand), wife of Deputy Sheriff Clinton Pell (Connor Price), the missing bodies are found. Eventually, the pieces begin to fall into place, and arrests are made.
This is not an easy film to watch; those sensitive to racism and racially motivated violence may find it unbearable to watch. But it is a film that needs to be seen, in my opinion. It not only exposes the violent side of racism but the less overt side of it, too. We also see that even the good guys can be on the wrong side of this sensitive topic. This is illustrated early on in the scene where we are introduced to Agents Ward and Anderson. Our first scene with them has Anderson singing a rather off-color KKK song he found in the FBI records, a song filled with racial slurs. He plays it off as hilariously bad songwriting, but it illustrates his casualness to racism. For his part, Agent Ward is more irritated by Anderson in this moment than he is offended. Whether Anderson intends the racism or not, he has no tolerance for what is going on in Jessup County and does whatever he deems necessary to find the guilty individuals.
Gene Hackman has the more difficult role here, playing the agent who has been previously assigned to Mississippi and has a bit more understanding of the people’s mindsets down there. He is placed under the authority of Agent Ward, who is more gung-ho but less experienced. The two will often clash over direction and methods, but neither is wholly wrong, and they will end up complementing each other nicely. There are moments, though, where Anderson gets a little too close to Mrs. Pell in his quest to coax her into shattering her husband’s alibi on the night of the disappearances.
Mississippi Burning may not be 100% factual, but that doesn’t really matter in the long run. It gives us an overview of the events that led up to the capture and prosecution of the men involved in the murders of those three activists. It brought into the cultural consciousness an understanding of what was going on in the South to the people in the African American community. I wish I had gotten to it sooner, back when my time living down there was more fresh in my mind. I loved living in Mississippi and the people I knew and worked with, many of whom would have been alive at the time these events were happening. Now that those events are sixty years in the past, those wounds are not as fresh, but that doesn’t mean they don’t still ache. The assailants that were caught and prosecuted served between three and ten years in prison, nowhere near enough for the crimes they committed. It’s a shameful moment in the history of the United States, and this film will help people confront that history head-on and not forget that it happened. We must not forget, lest we be doomed to repeat past mistakes.
Academy Award Nominations:
Best Picture: Frederick Zollo and Robert F. Colesberry
Best Director: Alan Parker
Best Actor: Gene Hackman
Best Supporting Actress: Frances McDormand
Best Cinematography: Peter Biziou (won)
Best Film Editing: Gerry Hambling
Best Sound: Robert J. Litt, Elliot Tyson, Rick Kline, and Danny Michael
____________________________________________________
Release Date: December 9, 1988
Running Time: 128 Minutes
Rated R
Starring: Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe
Directed By: Alan Parker
Comments
Post a Comment