FAQ

Unless one is invited in (anything) as a trusted source to comfortably dialog with they remain an outside source left to their own devices. Its the difference of trusting in a friend vs a total stranger. The word "insider" is appropriate here. Also keep in mind, this is a small tight community and everything you or don't do gets around. Outsiders stand out while insiders just go with the flow

Unless one is invited in (anything) as a trusted source to comfortably dialog with they remain an outside source left to their own devices. Its the difference of trusting in a friend vs a total stranger. The word "insider" is appropriate here. Also keep in mind, this is a small tight community and everything you or don't do gets around. Outsiders stand out while insiders just go with the flow

my guess is that they lived in a very tight knit community where word gets out really fast.

When three civil rights workers go missing in Jessup County, Mississippi, two FBI agents are sent to investigate. Agent Alan Ward (Willem Dafoe) takes a by-the-book approach to the investigation, while Agent Rupert Anderson (Gene Hackman), once a sheriff in Mississippi before joining the FBI and a Democrat, is familiar with the local culture and not above bending the rules. Soon enough, however, Ward learns that Anderson justice is the only justice that works. Then he breaks all the constitutional rights he set out to protect.

Mississippi Burning is loosely based on a real incident in which FBI agents John Proctor and Joseph Sullivan investigated the murders of three civil right workers—Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman, and James Chaney—in the state of Mississippi in 1964. The screenplay for the movie was written by American writer Chris Gerolmo.

Because Ward's way wasn't working. Every time he went to talk to someone, they ended up being a target for the Klan.

The movie doesn't explain, so viewers have offered two suggestions: (1) KKK members did it in retaliation for her talking to Anderson, and (2) the FBI searched the house and left it in that condition.

We aren't told. Viewers have suggested that it belonged to James Chaney, the black civil rights worker slain by the KKK. Others think it doesn't belong to anyone in particular but is merely a symbolic gesture to show that the events of 1964 will not be forgotten. Still others postulate that it was both—Chaney's grave and a symbolic gesture to the viewers.

High on the list of recommendations by those who liked Mississippi Burning is In the Heat of the Night (1967), in which a black detective from Philadelphia is asked to investigate a murder in a racist Mississippi town. Another TV movie about the murders of the civil rights workers is Murder in Mississippi (1990). Other recommended movies dealing with racism toward African-Americans include: The Intruder (1962), Nothing But a Man (1964), A Time to Kill (1996), Ghosts of Mississippi (1996), and Rosewood (1997).