Putting out the fire in Mississippi burning

Mississippi burning is a drama/mystery film directed by Alan Parker in 1988. Mississippi burning is about two FBI agents who are sent down to the south to look for three missing civil rights activists. As the two FBI agents Rupert Anderson and Alan Ward go to investigate the scene, they are met with hostility from the locals citizens and the police department. As tension rises, and the investigation becomes more frustrating, more FBI agents are sent down to help with the case.

With tensions rising between the FBI and locals, the true racism in the south is shown, with the film showing multiple scenes of African Americans being beaten, or being harassed. Another example of Racism in the film is when Clayton Townley a local of the town, talks to the media about total non-acceptance of Jews, Papists, Turks, Mongols, Orientals, Asians, and Negros in his town. With the strong amount of violence involved in this case, and with the locals not helping at all the two FBI agents are forced to take a different path. Eventually the FBI find the bodies of the civil rights activist, and are able to convict the people apart with their murder, striking a major blow to the racist southern culture in the area.

This film has many important themes, the director intends for us to see, but one theme I saw throughout the film was the failure of the reconstruction period. The Reconstruction period, was after the civil war, and was "the effort to reintegrate Southern states from the Confederacy and 4 million newly-freed people into the United States." This effort was lead by president Andrew Johnson, who allowed , new southern state legislatures to pass restrictive “Black Codes” to control the labor and behavior of former enslaved people and other African Americans.

These black codes forced African Americans to take a step back in civil rights, which lead to the south being a hot place for racism, and harassment for African Americans. During this period instead of making an improvement for African Americans, America instead failed during the reconstruction period, and allowed for racism and discrimination to continue in America. It was because of this failure that racism in America continued until the late 1960s.

Sources

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095647/plotsummary#synopsis

https://www.gradesaver.com/mississippi-burning/study-guide/themes

https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/reconstruction