It probes the uneasy alliance of two FBI men, with Hackman as an ex-Mississippi sheriff who’s turned his back on prejudice and Dafoe as a brash Northerner eager to put his Kennedy-era ideals into action. It was a sight to behold-600 rowdy Mississippians standing in a big muddy field on a hot spring night, sweating and hollering, in no mood to leave.ĭue out by Christmas from Orion Pictures, the $15-million Dixie noir looks to be more than just another heated Hollywood polemic about race relations in the South. No one seemed to mind that it was way past midnight, the mosquitos were biting and the ground was so gooey that every time you moved, your feet sank up to your ankles. They’re powerless against us, if every last Anglo-Saxon Christian one of us stands together!” These Northern students, with their atheist communist bosses, came into our community this summer with the wish to destroy it. “They hate us because we present a shining example of successful segregation.
“ They hate Mississippi,” the man continued, his eyes shiny with fervor. Waving torches in the air, the crowd erupted with cheers and applause. He stood in front of a huge banner, adorned with the slogan, “Never Never Never.” Shaking his fist, he bellowed, “I love Mississippi!” A tall, angry man-his glasses steamy with perspiration, his face as red as his suspenders-was giving a stem-winding White Citizens Council stump speech. From “Attack on Terror: The FBI Against the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi,” by Don WhiteheadĮverybody stared hard at the stage.
Their response: “Paint him black and sentence him to life in Mississippi.” During World War II, a group of black soldiers were asked what should be done with Hitler if he were captured alive.