Mississippi Burning
”Mississippi Burning”
The relationship between white Americans and African-Americans in the USA in the early 1960s
Mississippi Burning is a movie that takes place in the early 1960s, 1964 to be exact, in a small town named Jessup. The relationship between the black and the white is very intense and the black people are treated like they are a step below the normal white man. The plot in the movie is about a missing person case (three boys fighting for the black people’s rights suddenly disappear) that two FBI agents are to investigate, and they get swept up into something much bigger than what they just came for; the conflict between the black and the white that took place in south of America in the 1960s. That is what I’m going to discuss further in this essay, namely what the movie tells us about the relationship between the white Americans and the Black American. With a particularly focus on racism, segregation and the arrogant South-state attitude the white people had.
Racism is a big part of the movie and tells us a lot about the relationship between the white and the black people in the early 1960s. The environment amongst the south-state people in Jessup is very influenced by all the racial attitudes the white people had at that time. The white people treated the black people as they were less valuable than themselves. The black people were, as we remember from the movie, not allowed to sit in the “best seats” at the restaurants, and they weren’t allowed to eat the “good” food. There were also supermarkets, hairdressers, cinemas etc. only enterable for the white man. And if the white man was to sit amongst the black people in, for example, a restaurant, he would immediately get a lot of angry and wondering looks by the other white people (as we remember happened to Alan Ward). The white people did also have the law on their side. No matter how hard it affected the black man or how unfair it was, the white people could still do virtually everything they
The relationship between white Americans and African-Americans in the USA in the early 1960s
Mississippi Burning is a movie that takes place in the early 1960s, 1964 to be exact, in a small town named Jessup. The relationship between the black and the white is very intense and the black people are treated like they are a step below the normal white man. The plot in the movie is about a missing person case (three boys fighting for the black people’s rights suddenly disappear) that two FBI agents are to investigate, and they get swept up into something much bigger than what they just came for; the conflict between the black and the white that took place in south of America in the 1960s. That is what I’m going to discuss further in this essay, namely what the movie tells us about the relationship between the white Americans and the Black American. With a particularly focus on racism, segregation and the arrogant South-state attitude the white people had.
Racism is a big part of the movie and tells us a lot about the relationship between the white and the black people in the early 1960s. The environment amongst the south-state people in Jessup is very influenced by all the racial attitudes the white people had at that time. The white people treated the black people as they were less valuable than themselves. The black people were, as we remember from the movie, not allowed to sit in the “best seats” at the restaurants, and they weren’t allowed to eat the “good” food. There were also supermarkets, hairdressers, cinemas etc. only enterable for the white man. And if the white man was to sit amongst the black people in, for example, a restaurant, he would immediately get a lot of angry and wondering looks by the other white people (as we remember happened to Alan Ward). The white people did also have the law on their side. No matter how hard it affected the black man or how unfair it was, the white people could still do virtually everything they