Cinema Saturday: Mississippi Burning

It's now February and it's Black History Month and today's Cinema Saturday will take a look at a movie that focuses on a violent and tragic time in the fight for civil rights in the 1960's.

Although as I will write about later in this post, it is not necessarily as well regarded movie by a lot of African Americans.

From 1988, our movie today is Mississippi Burning.  Directed by Alan Parker, the film stars Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe  as two FBI agents investigating the disappearance of three civil rights workers in fictional Jessup County, Mississippi, who are met with hostility by the town's residents, local police, and the Ku Klux Klan.

1964 in Jessup County, Mississippi, along a dark and lonely stretch of road three civil rights workers – two Jewish and one black – are ambushed by a group of men (include sheriff's deputies) and summarily executed for the crime of helping black citizens get registered to vote. 

The FBI sends Alan Ward (Dafoe) and Rupert Anderson (Hackman) to investigate. Ward is a Northerner, senior in rank but much younger than Anderson, and approaches the investigation by the book. Ward figures he's got the power and resources of the federal government on his side and his cause his just, to find the three missing young men and if they are dead, make damn well sure some one pays for their deaths.

In contrast, Anderson, a former Mississippi sheriff, is more nuanced in his approach, looking to ingratiate himself with the locals. 

Neither of them find success. 

Racism is not just one clogged artery in the circulatory system that is life in Jessup County.  White supremacy is baked into the churches, the schools, the economy and the government of Jessup. No white person is going to speak out to help these government agents find out what happened to those boys because if they are dead, those "n****r lovers" got what was coming to them. 

The n-word gets tossed around a lot.  

And no black person is going to speak out either. They are the frequent and constant targets of harassment, assault, murder, arson and torture in a campaign of terror being waged by the Ku Klux Klan, an entity of considerable power in the county.

When agent Ward approaches a black man to ask question, the man clearly says to all who can hear, black and white, "I ain't got nothing to say to you, sir." He says it a second time and walks away from Ward.

Later that same black man gets the living shit beat out of him for speaking to the Feds even though the extent of his talking to the Feds was "I ain't got nothing to say to you, sir."

To further drive home who is in charge around here, the Klan engages in several fire bombings of black churches and homes. Mississippi Burning lives up to it's title quite literally. 

Ward keeps upping the ante with increasing personnel and money and he can't get nothing to crack.

Anderson's more furtive inquiries makes it clear to him those young men are dead and buried somewhere in Jessup County. Proving it is a whole other thing. 

One possible lead is Mrs. Pell, a young housewife and hairdresser at the local ladies' salon. She is married to one of the deputies that we know (and Ward and Anderson suspect) took part in the killing of the 3 men.   

Mrs. Pell  eventually refutes her alibi for her husband and discloses where he told her the bodies are buried. 

Side note: I am referring to her as Mrs. Pell because it appears the screenwriter did not give her a first name. C'mon, this movie is from 1988, not 1958! 

Her reward for standing up to evil, hate and ignorance? Her husband beats the total crap out of her, putting her in the hospital. 

There is a trial for the men charged with murdering the three young civil rights workers. They are found guilty but the judge only sentences them to 5 years in prison AND suspends even those sentences because there were extenuating circumstances.  Translation: those "n****r lovers" got what was coming to them. 

Ward and Anderson had these fuckers dead to rights for murder and they're gonna get away with it? The two FBI agents are gonna bust the god damn Klan on something and screw the rule book.  

Basically, Ward and Anderson work up a con using the Klan's paranoia and ignorance against them, to make the various members of the Klan think their fellow members have already turned on them.  

Civil rights violations are federal offenses and no bought and paid for state judge is going get the Klan off this time and the Klansmen go to prison. 

Before leaving town, Anderson and Ward visit an integrated congregation, gathered at an African-American cemetery, where the black civil rights activist's desecrated gravestone reads, "Not Forgotten."

I found Mississippi Burning to be a powerful portrait of a particularly fraught time in American history, where the struggle for civil rights for black people was for many in the deep south a state of war.  As a child of a small Southern town, I can attest that the attitudes towards African Americans on display by the white people of Jessup County in this movie were reflective of real life.

What appalled me was the extent that those same white people were prepared to go to enforce their narrow and hate filled perspective. I know people were killed in the nascent days of the civil rights movement but I was unprepared for the relentless pace of that violence. 

I can't say enough about how impressed I was with Gene Hackman in the role of Agent Anderson with varying levels of calm nuance and repressed anger. Anderson is from the South and he understands these people in Jessup County even as he is repulsed by the depths of their fear, hate and ignorance.

Frances McDoromand as Mrs. Pell (Seriously? No first name?) delivers a powerful performance as well. 

I was profoundly moved by what I saw in Mississippi Burning.

Others were not so kind in their assessment.  

Civil rights leader Julian Bond: "People are going to have a mistaken idea about that time ... It's just wrong. These guys (the FBI) were tapping our telephones, not looking into the murders." 

Bond ain't wrong by much. The notoriously racist J. Edgar Hoover was more intent on shutting down Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr than he was on saving ordinary black folks from racist oppression. But in the real life case that inspired the film, 2 of 3 civil rights workers were white so Hoover couldn't overlook that. And the subsequent fire bombings would be too big for even Hoover to ignore.   

Filmmaker Spike Lee criticized the lack of central African-American characters and the use of a white savior narrative.  

I see Lee's point but part of the narrative in Mississippi Burning is how difficult it was for any African American to have a voice or a role in the fight against a Klan that acted with impunity and ruthless and violent efficiency to shut down even the smallest glimmer of anything resembling any push back against the Klan's terrible grip on power.   

Alan Parker defended Mississippi Burning: "It is a fiction in the same way that Platoon and Apocalypse Now are fictions of the Vietnam War. But the important thing is the heart of the truth, the spirit ... I defend the right to change it in order to reach an audience who knows nothing about the realities and certainly don't watch PBS documentaries."

Well, Mississippi Burning reached me with a powerful story of man's inhumanity to man fueled by ignorance, fear and hate. 

Sadly, it is a story that remains relevant in 2024. 

Tomorrow's Cinema Sunday will look at a film biography of an African American performer from the early 20th century.