Analysis Of Mississippi Burning

Movies and entertainment outlets speak volumes about the current state of a nation’s culture. Cinematic creations in the United States allow small voices to be heard and controversial issues to be addressed. However, a repetitive and monumental issue continues to be addressed, yet continues to persist in our 21st century culture, racial inequalities. Since the inception of the United States, black men and women alike have been disenfranchised at the hands of the “white man” in America. Instead of continuing the conversation today, the issue is continually silenced referencing the successes and achievements of the Civil Rights Movement in the 20th century. Nonetheless, an unfortunate reality looms upon this great land; racially based systems and structures continue to exist in 2015 the in United States. This paper synthesizes three films focused on racial inequalities in different time periods. Separate but Equal (1991), Selma (2015), and Crash (2005) illustrate how influential the Civil War amendments are, while serving as an uncanny reminder of how the racial prejudices during the 20th century continue to exist in our great nation today. Needless to say our nation has made great strides, but still has a long way to go.

In Chapter 4 of his book, which is aptly titled “Postwar Passions”, Daniels chooses to focus on the experiences of African-Americans in the post-WWI era, specifically focusing on race riots that occurred during the “Red Summer” of 1919. (104) There is a long-standing history of racial discord between whites and African-Americans, but the post-WWI years are a unique time. It has been more than fifty years since slavery has been abolished, but it will still take another forty plus years before discrimination on the basis of race is made illegal in America. Industrialization after the turn of the century and blatant racism in the South led to the migration of millions of African-Americans to northern

He wants his readers to imagine the pain and humiliation of the ill treatment that African Americans endure on a daily basis. King writes of vicious mobs lynching people’s mothers and fathers, policemen killing people’s brothers and sisters, a man and his wife not receiving the proper respect they deserve because of their skin color, and the notion that African Americans feel insignificant within their communities; this is why these peaceful demonstrators of whom the clergymen attack “find it difficult to wait” (King, 20). However, King believes that soon, injustice will be exposed, like “a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up” (King, 30). This vivid description helps arouse an emotional response, driving shame into the hearts of his white readers.

Have you faced racial persecution due to the color of your skin? The time was 1900’s and this was the nightmare that Ida B. Wells-Barnett wrote of in Mob Rule in New Orleans. This is the true account of Robert Charles as he fights for his life to escape the hands of a lynching mob. This impassion story collaborates with the witness of this terrifying event that Wells describes. Wells uses her literary skills to shed light on racial discrimination, media bias, and her personal crusade for justice to portray this heart wrenching reality of the violent lynching during the 19th century.

John Lewis initiates his claim by conveying that everyone in America should not tolerate racial segregation nor discrimination. In order to reach to his point, he uses the rhetorical device, pathos, in which it causes the “white” audience to feel remorse for what society has become. To illustrate this idea, Lewis reveals African Americans “live in constant fear of a police state”, “have been arrested on trumped charges”, and some faced “the death penalty for engaging in peaceful protest” (paragraph 2). The evidence highlights that they are going through hardships caused by the federal government because they are considered “inferior” compared to the “white” race. From this, readers can infer that white supremacy is being marked on the walls. Lewis is able to awaken Americans so they can realize how their actions are wounding African Americans. In addition, Lewis is representing the African American community so they can feel inspired to join the Civil Rights Movement. Possibly the speaker is trying to drag the African Americans out of their state of oblivion by incentivizing them to defend their rights. Lewis is addressing the problems to both audiences so they can feel the urge to fix them. Therefore, Lewis’ remarks in the first paragraph reveal that he identifies with the concerns of African Americans and how whites, mainly activists, should focus on addressing their issues.

“Mississippi Burning” is based on the investigation of a missing persons case which turned into a murder case in Mississippi that involved three young students who were civil rights workers involved in Freedom Summer of 1964. Two of the students were Jewish and one was an African-American whom came down to Mississippi from New York City. After the students did not return home the parents pushed for media attention since the Mississippi Police were not doing any investigations. The FBI then had to get involved with the case. Little did the parents know that the police were the ones who actually committed the murder of their children. This film shows us the oppression towards African-Americans, specifically in the south.

The 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing on September 15, 1963 has been one of the most historic bombing in the African American community. Since then, the Spike Lee’s Four Little Girls film and the poem, Ballad of Birmingham, have been created to commemorate the event and the loss of the four beautiful young girls. Both have received awards for their outstanding and thoughtful works that both artist put into their projects. The movie, Four Little Girls, was a very stimulating movie because it was not your typical scripted play. It was a documentary of all the family, friends, and community that were affected by this event. On the other hand, the poem, Ballad of Birmingham, was very eye opening because it put a new perspective of the church bombing.

Wexler’s attention to these details ensures that the lynching victims are more than flat “symbols,” constructed by a foreign and long past semiotic system, to the reader. She writes, for instance, of George Murray, or Dorsey, who had “returned [to Monroe] from the army” (167), after “four and one-half years” of service, in September 1945, that he was a man who had “love for music,” “skill as a farmer,” and a memorable smile (99). In this respect, Wexler accomplishes the same empathy for an innocent victim as the NAACP, in 1946, might have done, and in similar style—as she contends, in parallel fashion to the deceased victims’

‘Fire in a canebrake’ is quite a scorcher by Laura Wexler and which focuses on the last mass lynching which occurred in the American Deep South, the one in the heartland of rural Georgia, precisely Walton County, Georgia on 25th July, 1946, less than a year after the Second World War. Wexler narrates the story of the four black sharecroppers who met their end ‘at the hand of person’s unknown’ when an undisclosed number of white men simply shot the blacks to death. The author concentrates on the way the evidence was collected in those eerie post war times and how the FBI was actually involved in the case, but how nothing came of their extensive investigations.

The Film I Am Not Your Negro is a 2016 Documentary that depicts the key events of the 20th Century African American History. This documentary was inspired by James Baldwin’s thirty-page unfinished manuscript. The manuscript was going to be his next project in which he called Remember This House. The manuscript was to be a personal explanation of the lives and successive assassinations of three of his close friends, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. Unfortunately, in 1987 James Baldwin passed away leaving the unfinished manuscript to be forgotten, well that is what some thought. Now master filmmaker Raoul Peck envisions the manuscript James Baldwin never finished. The outcome is a fundamental examination of race in America, using Baldwin's original thoughts and materials to make the project possible. I Am Not Your Negro is a journey into black history that connects the past of the Civil Rights movement to the present of Black Lives Matter. It is a film that questions black representation in Hollywood and beyond. And, ultimately, by confronting the deeper connections between the lives and assassination of these three leaders, Baldwin and Peck have produced a work that challenges the very definition of what America stands for. Though this is the main thought of the documentary there are many key features that make this film much so about whiteness in American History and now.

The discriminating social stratification in 1950’s developed a set of servile behavior on the blacks. They were thought to be inferior to whites, and were treated accordingly. Moreover, different parts of the country had various ranges of sensitivities while dealing with the blacks. For example, in Mississippi things were particularly tense after the Parker lynch case. No black man would dare look into any white man’s eyes in fear of the repercussions. On the bus, a man warned Griffin to watch himself closely until he caught onto Mississippi’s ways. In an extreme case like this, it was vital to learn about their roles and behave accordingly.

In Kevin Boyle’s Arc of Justice: A saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age, the author creates a way to describe the discrimination and horrible racial treatment inflicted on the African American community following the civil war and continuing into the 1900’s by following a black doctor’s life and his controversy in equality. The author sets the scene in the booming city of Detroit, a place many blacks ventured to when trying to escape the cruelty Jim Crow Laws forced upon many African Americans. The great migration of blacks fleeing to Detroit in search of a new life brought an increase of over seventy thousand people in just the short span of fifteen years. This sudden unwanted abundance of people, still disliked even in the North, lead to a city full of racial prejudices and unjust discrimination.

Christopher Paul Curtis wrote The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963 throughout the course of 1995. The novel follows the Watsons, a black family living in Flint, Michigan during the Civil Rights Era. In a historical context, 1963 and the early 1990s have far more in common than one would expect. The Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964 following the church bombing in Birmingham, and yet race-based discrimination remains a problem even in our modern society via passive racism. This paper will analyze the ways in which Curtis’ The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963 draws parallels between the time in which his is writing during and the time in which he is writing about. This analysis will also shed light on what can be called the “white

Racism has been a huge social issue for as long as I can remember. Not only does racism exists between whites and African Americans it exists between all different races all over the world. Although racism has changed a lot it still exists in many places all over the world. You would think that after so many years that people would learn that everyone is equal but some races still seem to think that they are superior to other races.

     The Mississippi Burning Trial” was not for the cold-blooded murders of three young civil rights workers, but rather for the violation of their civil rights. The federal government wanted to break Mississippi’s “white supremacy” stronghold on the South. “The Mississippi Burning Trial” proved to be the opportunity to do so. The three branches of the federal government and their various departments were actively involved in bringing about this civil rights trial in Mississippi and these activities and personal views are well documented in court records, department records, and the press.