Mississippi Burning: Prejudice and Tolerance

I had viewed the movie Mississippi Burning (1988) quite recently, and I pretty much liked the movie. I feel that the movie's main emphasis is on prejudice and tolerance, and this is because the Whites had prejudice against the Blacks, and because the Blacks had tolerated all the Whites had done to them without responding in any way. Let me explain further by giving an overview of the story.

The movie is basically about two FBI agents investigating the murder of three civil rights activists, and this leads them to Mississippi, a place whereby racial segregation takes place, and they face many difficulties in their investigation as there was a conspiracy of silence among Mississippi's state and the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). KKK is basically an organisation that has prejudice against the Blacks and feels that their lands belongs to only the Whites themselves, but not to the Blacks, and they had been intimidating and lynching the Blacks in Mississippi. The racial segregation in Mississippi was depicted rather obviously as seen by the difference in the water fountains the Whites and the Blacks drink from, and the seperation of the Blacks from the Whites in restaurants.

The Blacks have suffered alot due to the prejudice, and had developed tolerance towards the Whites' behaviour, especially the KKK's actions, and they do not respond or react to their actions, for fear of being tortured even more. This was the sole reason why the FBI agents had difficulties investigating the murder case, as neither the Blacks nor the Whites were willing to talk to them about what had happened to the three civil rights activists.

I like this movie because of its plot which flows nicely, from the depiction of the prejudication through racial segregation and the demonstrations of what KKK does to Blacks who talk to the FBI agents (Beating them up), to the gathering of evidence by the FBI agents by applying violence back to the KKK members, then eventually get to the truth of the murder case, and finally jailing many of the KKK members. I like this movie also because there was a contrast in the two FBI agents' style of gathering evidence, and the movie shown that going by the books wasn't a way to solve cases involving racism, and unorthodox methods like applying violence had to be used to gather evidence.