Mississippi Burning
- This is a preview of the essay.
To view the full text you must login!
In 1962 only 6.7 percent of African Americans in the state of Mississippi were registered to vote, the lowest percentage in the country. The film "Mississippi Burning" shot in 1988, dealt with the racial bigotry prevalent in the "Deep South" and presented a portrayal of the events leading up to the United States v. Cecil Price et al trial, also known as the "Mississippi Burning" trial, in 1967. It was not coincidence that the nation's lowest percentage of voting African Americans was in Mississippi. A vast majority of the population sought to keep it that way. However, there were members of the Mississippi Summer Project, an effort to bring college-age volunteers to "the most totalitarian state in the country" (Linder 01) in order to help end segregation. Their efforts suffered a setback when three civil rights workers, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney were shot on a lonely road in Neshoba County, Mississippi. Sam Bowers, the Imperial Wizard of the Klu Klux Klan, devised this conspiracy known as "Plan 4, " to exterminate Schwerner, who had organized a black boycott of a white-owned business and encouraged blacks to vote in Neshoba County, Mississippi. When word got out about the "disappearance" of the three men's there was a nationwide concern...