This film ought to be shown in history class.
I was fortunately enough to witness this film at an age where critical thinking will shape my understanding of fellow mankinds for eternality
Others should also have such oppertunity
There is no escaping reason, no denying purpose. To deny history is to deny the very meaning of our existence.
lol- i just finished it in histroy class. for a class of 15yr old boys who've seen a lot of action films- this didnt fail to shock. key scenes for us were
-describing the cutting of the scrotum
- the car chase
-the hanging
Mississippi burning is an entertaining move, don't get me wrong. I even thought it a great movie in the naivete of youth. However, it is not historically correct, it is a revisionist history. Have a look at this:
http://www.cinepad.com/reviews/mississippi.htm
"Your mother's in here with us."
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First of all, it was ANDY Goodman, not Adam. Israel in the 1960s was a different deal than it is now. And don't forget Jim Chaney in your analysis, who did what he did even knowing how dangerous it was for him to be out there.
If you had been there, your opinion about the white supremacists might have been different. I'm white, I was there (I was 16 when the murders happened), and those KKK activists were indeed terrorists of the worst sort.
You are entitled to maintain your opinion of right and wrong here, but if you want to develop an informed opinion and support it with inormation about the events, you should hold yourself responsible to read historical accounts and see what was going on at the time.
"Witness in Philadelphia" is an account of the killings and what had been happening before and after, written by a local white woman, Florence Mars. "Three Lives for Mississippi" is an account of the killings and the investigations, written by a white journalist from Alabama, William Bradford Huie. A similar story has just come out in the past year, told by (white) TIm Tyson in "Blood Done Sign My Name," about a 1970 killing in Oxford, NC, not far from where I live now.
And finally, I hope that you realize that you are putting yourself into a terribly uncomfortable corner, if you wish to maintain the stance you have now. If the killers' actions were not oppressive and terribly unjust, how else are you going to evaluate the behaviors of more than 40 people (including publicly elected officials), who decide to brutally murder Americans for registering other Americans to vote? I thought voting was a right and a patriotic duty - should some Americans not have that right, just because their skin is not "white"? Should our citizens be murdered, and their bodies hidden away in a muddy dam, without getting a decent funeral among their family, because they support the rights of American citizens? Isn't that the kind of stuff our soldiers have fought for for more than two hundred years?
Any teacher who shows this in history class should be fired by the school board because this isn't a history film as much as leftist propoganda. By showing this film you are teaching hated for the South as well.
If indeed this was shown in a classroom then these students would give the name of the school, the city, teacher, ext. Some of these who claim to have seen this film is school are in fact bluffing because they know Mississippi Burning is rubbish which would NEVER be shown in a classroom.
nullo facere opinari omnia in serium convertere. vitae ad eundem modum jocari
I am a 15 year old from Australia..
My history teacher recently showed this in our history class and i think it was right of him to do so.
It was not to teach of the south but of racism in the 60's.
We did not believe it was rubbish, just a movie used as a tool teachers sometimes use to get through to students the harshness of the situation.
I am a Philadelphia, MS native. True-the murders of the three civil rights workers DID happen-a deplorable situation by any human standards. But as a whole this film surely didn't do Southerners any justice.
I have friends of all races, including black, and was a Mexican/American kid growing up in Mississippi in the 70's. It was tough, but I would have had it equally tough growing up anywhere in the U.S., or even Mexico (half breeds are usually derided by BOTH races, usually).
I very much believe in the words of Dr. King, in that a man should not be judged by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character.
The abysmal truth is that there are very few of any race that have any character.
"Mississippi Burning" is rightist--not leftist--propagnda, to my point of view.
It sets up the FBI and white guys as the saviors of these poor passive black characters, who need someone good like J. Edgar Hoover to solve their problems for them.
" "Mississippi Burning" is rightist--not leftist--propagnda, to my point of view.
It sets up the FBI and white guys as the saviors of these poor passive black characters, who need someone good like J. Edgar Hoover to solve their problems for them. "
That seems to coincide with my claim that this film is benevolent white supremacy. Those responsible seemed to think blacks were too docile to wipe their own noses and therefore needed to be patronized by idealist whites. In reality, it was largely the black Americans who were the idealist and therefore the primary heroes of the Civil Rights era, at least in MY opinion.
nullo facere opinari omnia in serium convertere. vitae ad eundem modum jocari
I'm a 16 year old from England, and this movie IS shown in history classes - it's one of the official sources for our coursework - that's why I'm on this website lol.
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"I'm a 16 year old from England, and this movie IS shown in history classes - it's one of the official sources for our coursework - that's why I'm on this website lol."
I'm from Mississippi and lived in England for 2 years. I've always attempted to speak well of England, so I feel that my home state is entitled to mutual respect. I hate to think that teachers in other countries are fostering prejudice towards me.
nullo facere opinari omnia in serium convertere. vitae ad eundem modum jocari
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"if you went to a place in mississippi wearing klans robes down the street what would happen?? "
You would likely be arrested for marching without a permit. Towns enacted certain blue laws to keep the Klan from visiting, where the first amendment in this case is ambiguously negligible.
nullo facere opinari omnia in serium convertere. vitae ad eundem modum jocari
I lived in Meridian MS in the mid-80s, 35 or so miles from Philadelphia. The only difference in Mississippi 20 years after the fact and at the time is that in the 80s, it wasn't official state policy. But, the racism was still there just like it had been 20 years earlier. And yeah, I taught history, too. I know that the names are different, and that the investigation hinged on informants from within the Klan, not the deputy's wife, and that the trials took place three years later. But, I've never seen a film that portrayed what it was like in the deep south during that time period like this one did. I used it in class, with permission from my principal and the board, and never had a complaint.
shareBy "racism" do you include black on white "racism" ? In your history class, would you teach that race relations is a two way street? Did you tell your students that blacks were docile and needed whites to save then like this film depicted? Did you tell these students that ALL whites were sadistic, lowbreed, uneducated plebeians ? If you believe Mississippi Burning to be inerrant, then you shouldn't have been teaching history.
nullo facere opinari omnia in serium convertere. vitae ad eundem modum jocari
I'm from Mississippi and lived in England for 2 years. I've always attempted to speak well of England, so I feel that my home state is entitled to mutual respect. I hate to think that teachers in other countries are fostering prejudice towards me.What prejeduce? We had to analyse 10 sources about "black America", and 'Mississippi Burning' was one of those 10 sources. share
The movie depicts Mississippi in a very prejudiced manner. Blacks are not docile, nor are whites all sadistic. One bad incident makes not the whole state. I used to live in county Suffolk and found the people to be very peaceful. They are lovely and England is a lovely country, and just because you have one series of murders in Ipswich can't change that. Nobody lives in perfect world.
nullo facere opinari omnia in serium convertere. vitae ad eundem modum jocari
You are right - "one bad incident makes not the whole state."
But Mississippi in 1964 was the site of 36 church burnings, half a dozen other hate-murders, countless beatings of "agitators." When the federal investigators were searching that summer for the bodies, they found three other black men's bodies (I say "men," but one of them was 14 years old) submerged in rivers and streams. Mississippi in 1964 had State-accepted racial violence and State-sponsored resistance to federally guaranteed rights. Indeed, not all whites were sadistic--but there was an institutionalized system of brutality used to enforce the segregated order.
The moral difference between 1960s Neshoba County, where law enforcement officers were key to the murders, and 1960s Dallas, which happened to be the location of Lee Harvey Oswald's assassination of JFK, is substantial.
As I understand you too are from Mississippi. Doesn't it trouble you that our state is stereotyped based on a fictional movie which is based only on SOME actual events?
In 1988 when this film was popular, I was not living in Mississippi so I experienced the full impact this had on Mississippians image. Those who discriminated against me couldn't find Mississippi on a map, but lectured me on how bad it is. Many people came out of this film deeply prejudiced against not only the state, but me personally. They didn't know ME nor did they didn't know Mississippi, that's why they were forced to eat crow.
nullo facere opinari omnia in serium convertere. vitae ad eundem modum jocari
The movie depicts Mississippi in a very prejudiced manner.It depicts one incident in Mississippi that happened decades ago. share
Well, I'm planning on showing this in an ethics class - hopefully it will encourage some discussion about whether the 'ends justifying the means' or not... after reading all this, it looks like I might get some intersting discussion after all.
shareinteresting discussion? Not likely, you will more likely get smug condescendence towards Mississippi from those who feel they live in an egalitarian world.
The "ends justifies the means" element of the film was largely fictionalised where the FBI threatens to castrate the mayor, or the guy soils his pants.
nullo facere opinari omnia in serium convertere. vitae ad eundem modum jocari
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I've never seen this movie, though do remember very well when it came out in theaters in December, 1988 and early 1989. Ironically, that was my last year of college (as a junior), because I was foolishly trying to major in business rather than history. I was not good at it, did very poor academically and was put out for a semester (fall, 1989). But if I'd majored in history as should have I'd have been very close to graduation with this degree in 1988-89, and would have soon gotten the degree and then a career related to it. I don't know exactly what it would have been, but a high school history teacher would have been one of the definite possibilities. And I do remember then how controversial this movie was, so I'm not sure if I would have shown it to any class I had (likely would've asked the administrators what they thought). And I was living in South Carolina then, which like Mississippi does have racial issues (though not to that degree). But I moved to Miami in December, and read this week in the Miami Herald a brief review of the January 22, 1989 Super Bowl between Cincinatti and San Francisco, which was played in Miami. Right before then a hispanic policeman shot and killed a black motorcyclist in the Overtown area, and his passenger died the next day. That led to several days of vicious riots in Overtown and Liberty City right before and up to the game, which I do remember very well. What I did not know until reading this was that Cincinatti's team stayed at the Omni International Hotel in downtown Miami, six blocks from Overtown, and they could see the fires burning from this rioting. And several of their players had gone to a theater to see this movie, and upon returning to this hotel one said, "We returned from seeing Mississippi Burning to see Miami burning". He did not mean this as a joke, as the players from both teams were clearly upset by this the whole week they were here for the Super Bowl. Ironically, I plan to apply at the Omni International as a hotel houseman Tuesday morning, and then go to the Hyatt by Miami's airport and apply for this there (as that is the career I want now, since did not get the history degree/career). But this Hyatt is where the San Francisco team stayed that week (too far away to see anything in Overtown, but they were well aware of it).
"I happen to be a vegetarian". Lex, from Jurrasic Park
" And I was living in South Carolina then, which like Mississippi does have racial issues (though not to that degree). "
Oh believe me the great state of South Carolina gets gets defamed and belittled as well. The NAACP still attempts to drive away tourist to that state, simply over a civil war memorial. As of 2005, their efforts were a miserable failure as Charleston's tourist business was booming.
nullo facere opinari omnia in serium convertere. vitae ad eundem modum jocari
This was passed around in my final year of history at school as we were doing the Civil Rights and prejudice in America that stemmed from the Civil War's end in 1865. First time I saw the movie also and it is a great 'film for history'.
P.S. This must be the oldest board ever.
Iam 14 and i put this film on when i was around 6 at my grandmars (not knowing what it was) while my granddad was asleep in the chair lol about 5mins into the film my gran stormes in and tured it of and gave my granddad a quick slap around the head about 7 years later i watched it and was deeply touched by the fact how horrible this film was (but exzellent) last year i asked my history teacher could we watch it in history he said unfotunatly we couldent as of the age shame
What i want to know is why burn crosses ?
"Life moves prety fast, if you dont look around once and a while you might miss it"
A thoughtful question!
The cross of course is connected to Klansmen's identification of the group as Christian.
Burning it?
For practical reasons, it was burned because that made it feared and dangerous for their enemies.
For ideological reasons, Klansmen saw it as a fighting kind of Christianity; it sent a message that this was the kind of mission they had--to crusade against Satan and evil.
Thank you for replying
"Life moves prety fast, if you dont look around once and a while you might miss it"
We did watch it when we were doing Civil Rights for History Coursework
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