Mississippi Burning - Historical Background

Historical Background

Mississippi Burning was based on the historical events surrounding the murders of three Mississippi civil rights workers. The story was first turned into a 1975 television docudrama titled Attack on Terror: The FBI vs. the Ku Klux Klan, depicting many of the same events as the film.

Neither production gave the real names of the murderers, due to legal considerations, and Mississippi Burning does not mention the victims (who are referred to as "the Boys") by name in the film. In the film credits they are simply identified as "Goatee", based on Michael Schwerner, played by Geoffrey Nauffts; "Passenger", based on Andrew Goodman, played by Rick Zieff; and "Black Passenger", based on James Chaney, played by Christopher White.

The film presents Clinton Pell's wife as the informant. The identity of the real informant, known in history as "Mr. X.", was a closely held secret for forty years. In the process of reopening the case, journalist Jerry Mitchell and teacher Barry Bradford discovered his real name. The mysterious black associate of Rupert Anderson who threatens to castrate the mayor while he is bound to the chair is based on Colombo crime family capo and FBI informant Gregory Scarpa Sr. The character "Frank Bailey", played by Michael Rooker, is based on Alton Wayne Roberts, Stephen Tobolowsky as "Clayton Townley" based on Samuel Bowers and Pruitt Taylor Vince as "Lester Cowens" based on Edgar Ray Killen.

According to the testimony of Colombo crime family contract killer Gregory S. Scarpa Jr., the cinematic version may have come closer to the truth than the official FBI story out of Washington, D.C. His story has been supported in several news accounts by unnamed FBI agents purported to have worked on the MIBURN case, as well as Scarpa's own FD-209 reports, which were released and made public after his death. Scarpa has said that his father, Gregory Scarpa Sr., capo of the Colombo crime family and Top Echelon FBI informant, offered his services in the case to his FBI handler, Anthony Villano. He made a three-day trip to Mississippi where, posing as a member of the national Ku Klux Klan himself, he and an FBI helper kidnapped a local appliance salesman and Ku Klux Klan member who was viewed by the FBI as a potential weak link in the case. They took the man to a remote location, tied him to a chair, and interrogated him. The first two times he told the story, the agent and Scarpa believed that the man was lying. On the third try, Scarpa pulled his gun on the suspect. "He said he took a gun and put in the guy's mouth and said: For the last time, where are the bodies or I'll blow your head off", Gregory S. Scarpa Jr. testified. Events similar to Scarpa Jr.'s story are reenacted in the film. The KKK member finally confessed to the location of the bodies, Scarpa Jr. said.

One such report, written in January 1966, states that Scarpa was later used as a "special" — the FBI term for a nonagent working for the Bureau in the murder of Vernon Dahmer, the head of the NAACP office in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Dahmer's house was torched by the Ku Klux Klan, and the memo states that Scarpa Sr. was sent to Hattiesburg to work on the case. However, evidence from journalist Jerry Mitchell and Illinois high school teacher Barry Bradford contradicts this account. They claim that the informant who revealed the location of the bodies was highway patrolman Maynard King, who gave the information willingly to FBI agent Joseph Sullivan. The similarity between Scarpa's account and the film may be best explained by the fact that Scarpa's testimony was recorded some years after the film was released. Both the Justice Department and the FBI have officially declined to comment on any role Gregory Scarpa Sr. may have played in the MIBURN. In Cartha DeLoach's account of the MIBURN case in his memoir, Hoover's FBI, he does not mention Scarpa. It does say that a squad of COINTELPRO agents were sent to interview members of the Ku Klux Klan and that "many of them were big, bruising men, highly trained in the tactics of interrogation."

Cartha "Deke" DeLoach's official version is that the FBI paid for its first big break in the case, which was the location of the bodies. In his memoirs, he describes the men only as "a minister and a member of the highway patrol." DeLoach does not say how the two men knew that the three civil rights workers had been buried under twelve feet of dirt in an earthen dam on a large farm a few miles outside Philadelphia, Mississippi, but he did say that the FBI paid $30,000 for the piece of crucial information.

The statement made by "Mayor Tilman" to the FBI agents is paraphrased from a quote by U.S. Senator James Eastland, who reportedly said that when the three civil rights workers (Mickey Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman) went missing in Mississippi on June 21, 1964, "the incident is a hoax and there is no Ku Klux Klan in the state; the three have gone to Chicago", and that it was staged by the three young men to call attention to their cause. J. Edgar Hoover, who was being pressured by President Lyndon B. Johnson, was determined to break the case. He flew to Mississippi just before the first anniversary of the disappearance, which was officially regarded as a "kidnapping" to justify the FBI's involvement.