Mississippi Burning
By: Shimrit Hait
Rosenbaum warns about artistic depictions of historical atrocities.
He questions the traditional notion that those who don’t know history
are doomed to repeat it. After all, Holocaust education has clearly
not prevented the perpetration of genocide in Rwanada and Darfur.
But on a more simplistic level, depictions of atrocious historical
events help us to understand that which we might not otherwise be able
to. These depictions may help raise the knowledge we have of these
events from a subconscious to a conscious level.
The movie Mississippi Burning was by no means an accurate portrayal of
those horrific events of 1964. But still, for those of us who were
not alive in 1964, the movie enabled us to gain a greater
understanding of what occurred during that time. The movie depicted
the baseless hatred that existed and the dehumanization of the black
race. While race relations in the United States still have a long way
to go, we have certainly come along away from those times in rural
Mississippi. As someone who was fortunate enough not to have
experienced that time, I am grateful for works of art such as this,
which help me, ever so slightly, to understand what once was.
