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'Racism As Depicted In Narratives Of Redemption'

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Mississippi Burning is a film from 1988 about two FBI agents, Agent Ward and Agent Anderson, who go to a small town in Mississippi to investigate the disappearance of three civil rights workers. These civil rights workers include two white boys and one black boy. While the Agents try to investigate, many local authorities refuse to cooperate with them and blacks are too scared to get involved. We will use this movie to test Renee Romano’s interpretation of the popular memory of the civil rights movement. Renee Romano wrote “Narratives of Redemption”, which is an article about the popular memory of the civil rights movement. In this article Romano points out three facets of what she calls the trial narrative. The film Mississippi Burning fits …show more content…

This film does not agree with this facet of the trial narrative because it does not focus on individual racists, but rather the culture of racism. A scene to prove this takes place when a group of men are all brought together in the church. Everyone in the church is an important individual in the community. These people include the Sheriff, Deputy, Mayor and Business Person. This group of individuals is important to the town because they all have power in the community. However, all these individuals are racist. Deputy Clinton Pell is working for the KKK and the leader of the murder of the civil rights workers. Mayor Tillman believes that blacks are happy with their current state. Sherriff Ray Stuckey is a member of the KKK and is hiding evidence about the murder case in order to help Deputy Pell. Because of this, all these individuals fall under the category of culture of racism. This is important because it shows that this film does not focus on certain individuals being racist, but rather a whole culture. Therefore, Mississippi Burning does not fit the second facet which solely focuses on individual

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In addition the scenes of violence and racism in the film Mississippi Burning affected my emotions leaving me speechless,disappointed about how 1964 once was. Witnessing factual history unfold in the film was devastating it is a crucial process to understand. The African Americans were innocent. Other individuals conducted harming particularly the African American race as a game,that they gained pleasure from. To start with it’s cruel and inhumane it is an additional insult to humanity.

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