New York Times/ What Was Fact vs. Fiction

"Mississippi Burning" is not a documentary.  It is a theatrical movie that presents the events that took place in Philadelphia, Mississippi the summer of 1964. Three civil rights workers - Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman white men from New York; and James Chaney a black man from Neshoba County, were brutally beaten and shot to death. The movie covers that horrific summer night as well as the investigation that proceeded the events with good accuracy, but like many "Hollywood blockbuster" it does have, "dramatic embellishments to capture - and shake - a wider audience." 

In an article that I discovered from the New York Times written by Wayne King; a Times reporter who covered the civil-rights movement during the 1960's, published a review on the film that gives the facts and the fiction that were depicted in the movie.  What I found to be fact was to be very surprising but what I found to be fiction was astonishing.  I want to bring out Mr. Parker's truth behind the movie then emphasize on the fiction that he used to capture the audience.  

The Truth


  • In the opening scene Mr. Parker takes you in the car of the civil-right workers when they are chased down and forced to pull over by the Klu Klux Klan. The workers are then harassed by the KKK. The reenactment in this scene is very closely related to the actual event.  What Mr. King researched is that in this very scene James Chaney's killer was quoted to have said, "You didn't leave me nothin' but a nigger, But at least I killed me a nigger."; It was found in the F.B.I. files to have been said by one of the participants in the murder.  
  •  The use of 150 F.B.I. agents to investigate the missing persons Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner was accurate.  
  • After 44 days of searching for the three workers investigators found the bodies in makeshift graves.  
  • Three years pass before the ones responsible for the murders are convicted of civil-rights violations and then received prison terms up to 10  years, but none ever served for more then 5.  Cheriff Cecil Price, six others, and Klan Imperial Wizard Sam Bowers were the culprits in this case.  

The Fiction
  • The scene were Mr. Dafoe, Agent Ward, is in a restaurant and goes out of his way to sit next to a young black man, who is later beaten by Klansman, is unsure whether this was factual. 
  •  The movie portrays that every southern person is involved with the KKK this is fiction but very few people had the courage to act or speak up against them.
  • It took the agents 44 days to find the boys, in between that time period they also found other's they were not searching for like one 14 year-old boy who was never identified and two other black men.
  • The dramatic reality that of F.B.I. agents during the investigation was over heightened and not very efficient.
  • Mr. Hackman obtains some information about the Klansman and the workers through seduction of the one of the Sheriffs wife when in reality they just paid of a Klan member estimated at $30,000 dollars.  
  • To find out where the boys were burried and who killed them Mr. Hackman brings in a black agent who is called a "specialist" to intimidate the Mayor in telling the agents what had happened.  In fact back in the 1960's the bureau had no black agents employed for them.  
  • The F.B.I. staging the lynching of a Klan conspirator which is rescued by other agents also never happened.  The reality is that they got that information from two men who were threatened will long jail sentences, paid off, and later arranged a plea bargain for a lesser term in cooperation with the agents.


Mr. Parker defends his movie on why he used his fictional stories, 

"It's fiction in the same way that 'Platoon' and 'Apocalypse Now' are fictions of the Vietnam War. But the important thing is the heart of the truth, the spirit,'' he said. ''I keep coming back to truth, but I defend the right to change it in order to reach an audience who knows nothing about the realities and certainly don't watch PBS documentaries. The proof in the end  will be how it reaches an audience."


Michael Rushton
Link to article found here! 
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