It stars Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe as two FBI agents investigating the disappearance of three civil rights workers in fictional Jessup County, Mississippi, who are met with hostility by the town's residents, local police, and the Ku Klux Klan.

On release, Mississippi Burning was criticized by activists involved in the civil rights movement and the families of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner for its fictionalization of events.

The pair find it difficult to conduct interviews with the local townspeople, as Sheriff Ray Stuckey and his deputies influence the public and are linked to a branch of the Ku Klux Klan.

With the help of the son of a local pastor, the FBI is finally able to bring forward a witness who saw Klansmen firebomb a house, and three white men are arrested and tried for felony arson.

The FBI arranges the kidnapping of Mayor Tilman, taking him to a remote shack, where he is left with a black man who threatens to castrate him unless he speaks out.

Before they leave town, Anderson and Ward visit an integrated congregation, gathered at an African American cemetery, where the black civil rights activist's desecrated gravestone reads, "Not Forgotten."

On June 21, 1964, civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were arrested in Philadelphia, Mississippi, by Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price, and taken to a Neshoba County jail.

[11][12] After Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner failed to return to Meridian, Mississippi, on time, workers for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) placed calls to the Neshoba County jail, asking if the police had any information on their whereabouts.

[12] On October 27, 1967, a federal trial conducted in Meridian resulted in only seven of the defendants, including Price, being convicted with sentences ranging from three to ten years.

[11] In 1985, screenwriter Chris Gerolmo discovered an article that excerpted a chapter from the book Inside Hoover's F.B.I., which chronicled the FBI's investigation into the murders of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner.

[20][22] Gerolmo described his original draft script as "a big, passionate, violent detective story set against the greatest sea-change in American life in the 20th century, the civil rights movement".

After filming The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), Willem Dafoe expressed interest in playing Ward,[2] and Parker traveled to Los Angeles, where he met with the actor to discuss the role.

He also read Willie Morris's 1983 novel The Courting of Marcus Dupree, and looked at 1960s documentary footage detailing how the media covered the murder case.

[30] Pruitt Taylor Vince, who had a small role in Parker's previous film Angel Heart, plays Lester Cowens, a Klansman who unknowingly becomes a pawn in the FBI's investigation.

[32] Tobin Bell, also making his feature film debut, plays Agent Stokes,[33] an FBI enforcer hired by Anderson to interrogate Cowens.

[20] The crew also filmed the abduction of Mayor Tilman (R. Lee Ermey) and his subsequent interrogation by FBI agent Monk (Badja Djola).

[37] Mississippi Burning held its world premiere at the Uptown Theatre in Washington, D.C., on December 2, 1988,[38] with various politicians, ambassadors and political reporters in attendance.

[38][39] Orion was confident that the limited release would help qualify the film for Academy Awards consideration, and generate strong word-of-mouth support from audiences.

The consensus reads: "Mississippi Burning draws on real-life tragedy to impart a worthy message with the measured control of an intelligent drama and the hard-hitting impact of a thriller.

[53] In a review for Time magazine entitled "Just Another Mississippi Whitewash", author Jack E. White described the film as a "cinematic lynching of the truth".

[54] Columnist Desson Howe of The Washington Post felt that the film "speeds down the complicated, painful path of civil rights in search of a good thriller.

"[55] Jonathan Rosenbaum lambasted Parker's direction and stated that the film's focus on "the FBI as the sole heroic defender of the victims of southern racism in 1964...subverts the history of the civil rights movement itself".

[62] Writing for the Chicago Tribune, Siskel praised Hackman and Dafoe's "subtle" performances, but felt that McDormand was "most effective as the film's moral conscience".

"[64] Sheila Benson, in her review for the Los Angeles Times: wrote, "Hackman's mastery at suggesting an infinite number of layers beneath a wry, self-deprecating surface reaches a peak here, but McDormand soars right with him.

In the film, during the car stop precipitating the murder, the driver is white (presumably either Andrew Goodman or Michael Schwerner), and the black civil rights volunteer (presumably James Chaney) is in the back seat.

"[67] Myrlie Evers-Williams, the wife of slain civil rights activist Medgar Evers, said of the film: "It was unfortunate that it was so narrow in scope that it did not show one black role model that today's youth who look at the movie could remember.

"[68] Benjamin Hooks, the executive director of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), stated that the film, in its fictionalization of historical events, "reeks with dishonesty, deception and fraud" and portrays African Americans as "cowed, submissive and blank-faced".

[69] On a Martin Luther King Jr. Day (January 16, 1989) episode of ABC's late-night news program Nightline, Julian Bond, a social activist and leader in the Civil Rights Movement, nicknamed the film "Rambo Meets the Klan"[71] and disapproved of its depiction of the FBI: "People are going to have a mistaken idea about that time ...

"[14] On February 21, 1989, former Neshoba County sheriff Lawrence A. Rainey filed a lawsuit against Orion Pictures, claiming defamation and invasion of privacy.

[73] Mississippi Burning received various awards and nominations in categories ranging from recognition of the film itself to its writing, direction, editing, sound and cinematography, to the performances of Gene Hackman and Frances McDormand.