The 20 Most Historically Inaccurate Movies Ever

[MinM]

112. Aside from portraying J Edgar as a defender of Civil Rights...

it was pretty good.

A Perversion of the Past (MISSISSIPPI BURNING)

For most of its history, including the 60s, the FBI has been a racist organization. This isn’t simply a matter of hearsay or folk wisdom; it’s amply demonstrated in such places as I.F. Stone’s 1961 article, “The Negro, the FBI and Police Brutality,” James Farmer’s Lay Bare the Heart, and any Martin Luther King biography you care to pick. (The protracted persecution of King by J. Edgar Hoover is now part of the public record.) It’s even come to light recently, when a black FBI agent brought charges of racial harassment against his colleagues. In 1964, of course, there was no such thing as a black FBI agent anywhere in the U.S.

Unfortunately, the central narrative premise of Mississippi Burning sets up the FBI as the sole heroic defender of the victims of southern racism in 1964, which is more than a little disgusting. Embracing the premise unconditionally — unless one counts a single fleeting remark from a redneck, to a journalist, that “J. Edgar Hoover said Martin Luther King was a Communist,” which the film neither confirms nor privileges — the film tampers more than a little with historical facts: it subverts the history of the civil rights movement itself...

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