Excellent Film, Harsh viewer criticisms.

Rating: Null/10 (6 July 2000)

With some certainty, Mississippi Burning was the best film of 1988. I watched it recently, as I do from time to time, and in reading other viewer comments, I was dismayed to read such unwarranted and unintelligent criticism of a film that has done so much to expose the realities of the Black experience in the Deep South during the 1960's. On more than one occasion, a viewer (usually anonymous) has pinpointed the film as racist, in that it offers a view of the Civil Rights movement involving whites and government agents as key instigators of change. They feel that it portrays blacks in a negative light, downplaying the roles blacks played in the acquisition of their own equality. These people are either unaware, or just plain ignorant. There is a reason that this film focuses on the efforts of White FBI agents to locate the three missing boys. To begin with, this film focuses on a true story (slightly fictionalized for cinematic effect). During Freedom Summer of 1964, many white college students and black students as well worked under the guidance of groups like the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, in an effort to set up voter registration drives for blacks that had been historically disenfranchised. The three missing boys (two white, one black) received much attention during that summer from a Federal standpoint. This is a fact. Yet the reason for governmental interest in the murder of these boys exemplifies the attitudes of the era. Historically, murdered civil rights workers did not garner much attention. Yet because this case involved two northern whites, suddenly The FBI took interest. This is the reason for FBI involvement in the story. The fact that blacks are shown quite often as scared and unwilling to cause a stir in this film also is historically accurate. While there were many blacks that made great inroads and took huge risks to their personal well-being, the citizenry of blacks in this film is an accurate portrayal of the times. How many of us today would be willing to talk, inform, and be seen attempting to use our constitutional rights if we knew that such actions might get us killed? The seeming disinterest of blacks in this film is a result of years of Jim Crow legislation, of lynch law, and of outright terror tactics brought upon the black population by racist whites.It is a picture of a population that wants to stand up and scream, but is reluctant for very justifiable reasons. To stay alive often meant keeping your mouth shut. To make a film in which all black citizens of Philadelphia, Mississippi stood collectively against the perpetrators of these murders would be historically incongruent. Try to look past the overriding white involvement in this film and understand that this is the way the events unfurled. Perhaps it is a sad commentary on white involvement in Civil rights that was too little, too late. It took the death of two whites to spark interest in the events in Phil. Mississippi. This much is obvious. But as the search for these boys made headlines daily, just remember that many blacks were pulled from rivers that summer, in the search for the three civil rights workers. Unfortunately, these discoveries never made the headlines. A murdered white was cause for alarm. But a lynched black pulled from a swamp was merely accepted. Take this film as a lesson, and be glad that many things have changed since 1964.