Philadelphia Mississippi

In June 1964, three young civil rights workers--Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner--traveled to Philadelphia, Mississippi during the thick of Southern voter registration confrontations in order to investigate the burning of a black Methodist church. Shortly after their arrival, all three men were murdered and hastily buried outside of town, victims of what is generally acknowledged to be a KKK conspiracy. The tragedy almost immediately turned the sleepy backwater town into the focus of intense international media scrutiny, and the lives of both black and white townsfolk were irrevocably changed in the process. Philadelphia Mississippi investigates these lives thirty years later, and attempts to measure the changes in race relations and social conditions in the town since 1964. The picture that emerges through interviews with locals is one of a town still trying to come to grips with a badly scarred past, and with the persistent racial tensions which lie only slightly below the surface of everyday life. Although this is a well-intentioned and generally competent documentary, it has definite shortcomings. There's something annoyingly desultory and unfocused about the discussion, and something slightly disingenuous about the selection of interviewees, who are mostly liberal and genteel. (What would the filmmakers have discovered if they had ventured into darker social and political territory?) There's also a whole lot of bland rhetoric about the long way traveled and the long way yet to go, and a whole lot of stretching to make the point that the social and political issues faced by Philadelphia, Miss. may be similar to those being faced in our town. Still, despite these weaknesses, this may be a useful contemporary civil rights update for public and academic libraries, and is therefore an optional purchase. (G. Handman)