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Burning Mississippi Into Memory? Cinematic Amnesia As A Resource For Remembering Civil Rights, Kristen Hoerl
Burning Mississippi Into Memory? Cinematic Amnesia As A Resource For Remembering Civil Rights, Kristen Hoerl
Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications
The 1988 film Mississippi Burning drew extensive criticism for its misleading portrayal of the FBI’s investigation of three murdered civil rights activists in 1964. As critics noted, the film ignored the role of Black activists who struggled for racial justice even as it graphically depicted the violence that activists and other Blacks faced during the civil rights era. This movie’s selective depiction of events surrounding the activists’ deaths constituted the film as a site of cinematic amnesia, a form of public remembrance that provokes controversy over how events ought to be remembered. An analysis of the film and its ensuing …
Mississippi’S Social Transformation In Public Memories Of The Trial Against Byron De La Beckwith For The Murder Of Medgar Evers, Kristen Hoerl
Mississippi’S Social Transformation In Public Memories Of The Trial Against Byron De La Beckwith For The Murder Of Medgar Evers, Kristen Hoerl
Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications
In 1994, Byron de la Beckwith was convicted for the 1963 murder of civil rights activist Medgar Evers. Journalistic coverage of the trial and the 1996 docudrama Ghosts of Mississippi crafted a social values transformation myth that depicted Beckwith as the primary villain of the civil rights past and cast his conviction as a sign that racism had been cleansed from Mississippi. Popular media naturalized this myth intertextually though narrative repetition and through symbolic cues that established the film as a source of historic understanding. These cues deflected critical attention from contemporary social conditions that have maintained racial inequity and …