The movie's title is a reference to the song 'Mississippi Goddam', which was written and most famously recorded by
Nina Simone. Simone wrote the song in 1963 as a protest against the racial injustices that inspired the civil rights movement, especially the assassination of
Medgar Evers in Jackson, Mississippi, on June 12, 1963, and the Klan-set bomb that blew up the 16th Street Baptist Church and killed four little girls in Birmingham, Alabama, on September 15, 1963. Simone famously performed the song in front of tens of thousands of people at the third Civil Rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, in 1965. The chorus of the song is, "Alabama's got me so upset; Tennessee's made me lose my rest; and everybody knows about Mississippi goddamn!"
