"Mississippi Burning": Truth in Dramatics
April 14, 2000
5760
"Mississippi Burning" portrays shocking Southern tribalism and intense, violent efforts to maintain segregation. It follows the F.B.I. (1) search for the three missing civil rights workers of the "Freedom Summer" of 1964 with unflinching accuracy that makes the audience far more than flinch. Although the good guys are a little too good, the belligerence of the whites is frighteningly true to life. "Mississippi Burning" also hits on the major controversies and moral dilemmas that both the North and South faced. With realistic details and a crank of drama, the movie explores race relations, Federal and state control, and the provocation of violence with historical precision and thoughtfulness.
Behind the opening credits a church burns silently. The silence melts into the first scene, in which three young men - the civil rights workers - drive anxiously down a deserted road. Headlights glare into the back window, forcing the car to stop. The sheriff and a few of his deputies then harass the boys, calling one a "nigger-loving Jew-boy." The men in the car remain as subdued as they can. The driver is suddenly shot in the head. Silence transfers to the audience.
The scene cannot be wholly verified; in 1966 the Supreme Court convicted Sheriff Lawrence Rainey of Philadelphia, Mississippi and 17 other state officials and laymen of conspiracy, not murder.(2) But the violence of the murder is certain. The Deputy Sheriff of Neshoba County, Cecil Price, detained Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and Charles Shaney for speeding on the afternoon of June 21, 1964. He released them at 10:30 p.m. He and several other men then followed the car and pulled it over. The civil rights workers were taken to an official car, then taken off road. The scorched remains of their car were found off the highway two days later. An intense F.B.I. search for the missing men ensued. The bodies were discovered on August 5. (3)
The civil rights workers came to Mississippi along with hundreds of other students to aid in voter registration during what the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) called the "Freedom Summer." They feared not only a violent reaction from the whites to their program, but the specific violent reaction the three workers suffered. Days before the workers went down to Mississippi, the state legislature authorized the first state police force in its history. Officers patrolled towns and highways to prevent civil disorders caused by the workers, despite COFO's affirmation of non-violence in the campaign. The New York Times reported that Governor Paul B. Johnson, Jr. intended to use the force against white night riders in addition to black protestors. Before leaving for Philadelphia, Schwerner asked that the Federal Bureau of Investigation be notified should he not arrive there at the appointed time. It was reported that he, Chaney, and Goodman all feared for their lives. (4)
In the movie, blacks hold a meeting in which the speakers ask for justice among the ruins of the background church. In the actual case, COFO planned to build a "Freedom School" in the black Mount Zion Methodist Church east of Philadelphia. When church board members left a meeting on June 16, whites waited outside with whips. They burned the building after the assault. Among those suspected of planning the attack was Sheriff Rainey.
Alerted by COFO on the morning of June 22, President Lyndon B. Johnson sent the F.B.I. down to investigate immediately. In the movie, Federal agents Ward and Anderson suspect the sheriff and his deputies of conspiracy, specifically as members of the Klu Klux Klan. After fighting for entrance into the town barber shop and other strangely exclusive places, Ward and Anderson pin Klan membership on Deputy Clinton Pell (Price). In the Supreme Court case, another defendant, Reverend Delmar Dennis, was found to be a Klan chaplain. F.B.I. investigators repeatedly asked Rainey whether he was a Klan member, and Rainey refused to answer each time. Klan activity and membership rapidly increased in the Philadelphia region during the investigation. The surge merited a two-day visit from Imperial Wizard Robert Shelton of Alabama.
The investigation intensified during June and July as F.B.I. agents and later the National Guard poured into the Mississippi swamp in search of the missing men. In the movie, Klan members and other anonymous whites terrorize Philadelphia blacks. They bomb houses and lynch whoever they can catch as they bolt outside. They lay in wait for church congregations with batons. The whites hope to silence their black neighbors and thus sabotage the F.B.I. investigation. Not shown in the movie is the violence against the workers who continued the voter registration program despite the turmoil in the state. Some workers were beaten upon arrival into Jackson. Whites felt that all of the workers were looking for trouble, and that Mississippians were giving them what they deserved. (5)
In "Mississippi Burning," cameras and reporters flood in behind the men from Washington. When they aim their microphones at white faces, the interviewees angrily justify their actions by placing blame on the Northern "agitators." They complain that the North is "messing with us for fun," creating this hoax about the three missing men (6), then popping open beers and celebrating as they watch Mississippi suffer. Segregation is a successful system. The Mississippians may have committed "crimes", but they had to fight COFO, the NAACP (7), and the Federal government to maintain the peace of the old South. H.C. Watkins argued the Supreme Court case (which was not shown in the movie), "so far as I have been able to determine [the civil rights workers] had no authority to be [in Neshoba county]; they broke the laws of that county by speeding and they violated the American constitution [by] messing in local affairs in a local community." (8) The whites considered the media part of the injustice against them; in both the movie and real life a few cameramen were assaulted.
The issue at hand is states rights. Mississippians felt the growing presence of the F.B.I. threatened their governmental power, which did not seem to agree with its officials that justice had been done to the workers. Back North, groups like the NAACP and SNCC (9) petitioned the President to put the protection of the workers entirely in Federal hands. Some Washington officials, including the President, and most white Mississippians, felt that this would de facto rip away the state's right to enforce local law. The latter group, however, questioned the right of the Federal government and of any Northerners to even be in the state. The Confederate grudge against the North had been revived by the threat of Federal control of the South akin to that during the Reconstruction era. (10)
In "Mississippi Burning," agent Ward wonders if he and the other F.B.I. agents are provoking a "wave" of white hostility. But in later, less contemplative scenes, he and agent Anderson play it rough with the reticent Philadelphians, torturing the suspects in order to wheedle out the facts. They are crusaders against the barbarism of the South. How then does one compensate for J. Edgar Hoover, director of the F.B.I. during the investigation, who kept close and contemptuous files on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.? And the not-so-ideal black-to-white relations in much of the North? There is no way to measure the morality of each agent involved in the case. One can measure the social reform ushered in by the investigation. It far from ended racial inequality.
The timid blacks in the movie are part of the same cleaned-up piece as the agents. Just as virtue varies within any group of people, so some Mississippi blacks must have countered the white violence with their own. Anyone could have grabbed onto black nationalism, despite King's strong following in the South. Overall, however, the fear portrayed in the movie, the fear that they could hang for one word, was quite real.
"Mississippi Burning" itself sticks carefully not only to the facts, but to the emotions and questions evoked by the Freedom Summer murders. The agents in the movie mull disconcertedly over whether the investigation has caused violence or has merely catalyzed what was lurking beneath the surface of Philadelphia. Considering the history of discrimination in the South, someone had to break that surface tension, no matter the flood that ensued. The movie ends as the guilty step out of the courthouse; most receive ten years imprisonment. Although those serving or crying for justice are a little over-glorified, "Mississippi Burning" does not shy away from the very real injustice that reigned in Mississippi and that civil rights workers died willingly to change.
Bibliography
1. Apple Jr., R.W. "2 of Missing Men Feared for Lives." New York Times 25 Jun. 1964, national ed.: 1.
2. Emerson, Jim. "Mississippi Burning." Jeeem's Cinepad. Written 1988.
3. Mississippi. Sovereignty Commission Files. Continued investigation of the disappearance of three civil rights workers after they were released from the Neshoba County jail at 10:30 p.m., Sunday, June 21, 1964. 3 Jul. 1964.
4. "Mississippi Tense Over Voter Drive: Fears Violence in 'Invasion' by Student Volunteers." New York Times 21 Jun. 1964, national ed.: 1.
5. Sitton, Claude. "Graves at a Dam: Discovery is Made in New Earth Mound in Mississippi." New York Times 5 Aug. 1964, national ed.: 1.
6. Sitton, Claude. "Tip Leads to Auto: Wreckage Raises New Fears Over Fate of the Missing Men." New York Times 23 Jun. 1964, national ed.: 1.
7. Street, William B. "Questions Go Back to Beginning in Search for Rights Workers." Commercial Appeal [Memphis] 28 Jun. 1964, Sunday morning ed.: 1.
8. United States. Supreme Court. United States v. Price et al. Washington: Supreme Court, 1966.
9. Watkins, H.C. Supreme Court. Closing Argument in United States v. Price et al. Washington: Supreme Court, 1966.
