MURDER IN MISSISSIPPI

US, 1990, 96 minutes, Colour.
Tom Hulce, Jennifer Grey, Blair Underwood, C.C.H. Pounder, Andre Braugher, Josh Charles.
Directed by Roger Young.

Murder in Mississippi is a film made for television, soon after the release of Mississippi Burning. Mississippi Burning won acclaim in 1989, also receiving Oscar nominations.

This television film gives something of the background to the involvement of civil rights activists from the north, their going to the south, not knowing what they were expecting, caught up in the politics of the south, the violence of the south, and being murdered. Tom Hulce portrays the leader of the group.

The murders were also the subject of the film, Ghosts of Mississippi, directed by Rob Reiner with James Wood as one of the southern killers. The three films, with Mississippi in the title, are an interesting complementary group for a portrait of the south in the 1960s at the time of the civil rights movement and the work of Martin Luther King.

1. Mississippi Burning, its themes, controversies? Murder in Mississippi as a background to these events? Ghosts of Mississippi as a supplement? The point of view, perspectives on civil rights, on the violence in the south?

2. The film made for a television audience? A wide audience? Its re-creation of the period? Its use of southern locations? The young cast? The musical score?

3. The title, the sense of inevitability? The build-up of the characters, their mission, going to the south, their deaths, the aftermath? The information about them and the situation?

4. The 1960s, the civil rights movement, the changes in the south in the 1950s? The role of Martin Luther King? The Washington march? King’s speech? The civil rights, the attitudes of politicians? The peace movements of the time, the beginning of the Vietnam War? Peace corps volunteers? The young types, the whites from the north? African American and their suspicions? The work in the south, the inevitable violence? The results and the changes in civil rights? Within the quarter of a century from the events portrayed and the making of the film?

5. Meridian, the town, African Americans, the traditions, bigotry, the authorities, the police, the white people, the role of the Ku Klux Klan, the tests and the vote, morale? The detail of life in Meridian?

6. The African Americans, their hopes? The brother, the mother, Jimmy? The involvement of the northern activists? Wary and hostile? Learning lessons? Mickey and Rita, the meetings, the campaign, the visits? The disappearance, the failure to find the activists? Ohio, the training? The church, the return? The car, the talk? The prison? The violence in the car, deaths?

7. Mickey and Rita, their characters, their relationship? The New York background? Jewish background? Their ideals, arrival in the south, their style, the clashes? The apartment and difficulties? The nature of the threats, tyres, violence, the attempt on the car? Rita and her support, fears? Leaving? Returning? Mickey and his involvement, with Jimmy, Ohio, their coming back to take a stand?

8. The students, the push, the prison sequences, the pretence, deaths?

9. The role of the police, as individuals, as a group, their ethos?

10. The test, the woman, the judge?

11. The African Americans, their place in the town, the meetings, confronting bigotry?

12. Justice for those murdered? The cover-ups? The later decades and the revelation of the truth? The film as a demand for justice in many areas?