There have been many cases similar to that of the one portrayed in Mississippi Burning. One such example is the case of Emit Till. Emit was a fourteen year old black boy who was caught whistling at a white women in Mississippi. Emit was from Chicago, Illinois so he was not used to the violence of the south. Till was brutally murdered three days after the incident. His body was found three days after his murder in the Tallahatchie River. Till’s mother asked for an open casket so the world could see the brutality of his murder and maybe spark a change in the way things are done down south.
This case is similar to Mississippi Burning because the victims of both cases were young boys. The boys were all innocent of any crime and were murdered because of simple things like supporting a civil rights movement to whistling at a white woman. These case are very different in several ways as well. One difference is that in the case portrayed in Mississippi Burning there were two white boys who were also murdered along with an African American boy. Some believe that this is why there was a massive investigation which leads to the next difference. The size of the investigation was much larger than that of Emit Till’s which was still quite large. Much of Till’s famousness comes from the thousands of people watching on the news that a black boy from the north was murdered in the south.
This incident tells us a lot about the general feelings during the Civil Right Era. It shows the two very different opinions. The southern opinion was that African Americans are dirty, stupid and overall inferior to whites which meant segregation. The general northern opinion was just the opposite, African Americans are and should be equal under the constitution thus making segregation unconstitutional.
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