MovieChat Forums > Mississippi Burning (1989) Discussion > Ward and Anderson-experience of racism

Ward and Anderson-experience of racism

posted 4 years ago by merkin64 (122)
2 replies | jump to latest

The two contrasting FBI agents Ward and Anderson keep trying to understand each other while conducting their investigation of the three missing civil rights workers. Ward is an idealist, whereas Anderson is realist. He has seen racism and the corrosive effect it has on both black and white people. He tells Ward the story of his father who poisoned the mule of a black farmer who was prospering.
Anderson states that his father ashamed of what he done. He was unable to separate poverty from his own racism. Anderson is a Southerner who knows the mentality of Southern racists, as he has lived amongst them.

[–] RickGee (258) 4 years ago

I agree. I think Anderson understood that this kind of change had to come from the people up, while Ward felt it could be forced from the government down. That's not to say that law wasn't important, but law can't force a change of heart. Anderson probably understood it would never get where it needed to be in his lifetime, but he did what he could while he was here. He was probably a racist in his time, and he never got as far to the other side as Ward. But even George Wallace ultimately renounced his own past, and actually won something like 80 percent of the black vote during his last campaign for Governor of Alabama, which he won.

[–] merkin64 (122) 4 years ago

It was only when George Wallace became a born again Christian that he had a change of heart and renounced his past. Maybe him being in a wheel chair after the assassination attempt in 1972, made him also ponder the positions that he had taken.