That is a good article, Lagatta. One of the points made is cynical, but true. The strategy of bringing well-off white kids down to do civil rights work meant that when Andrew Schwerner was murdered, the case was a national one rather than a local problem involving "nigras".I do have one quibble though. The name "Mississippi Burning" comes from a Hollywood movie which absurdly presents the FBI as the best friends of the civil rights workers in the South. And the linked article hints that this was so.
But it wasn't. I was in Mississippi in the summer of 1967, and know that the FBI played a very dual role there, supposedly upholding the law, but also doing intimidation, compiling of dossiers on SDS students, and so on.
Whenever I talk to someone who thinks "Mississippi Burning" is a fair portrayal of the FBI in those years, I always remind him or her that J. Edgar Hoover was, at the same time, blackmailing Martin Luther King by bugging his motel rooms and coming up with evidence of marital infidelity, and "degenerate" sexual activity.
Hoover tried to goad MLK into committing suicide through this blackmail. Nice supporter to have, eh?
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posted 18 June 2004 05:19 AM
