Background of Study INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

A. Background of Study

The United States of America was established as a white society, founded upon the genocide of another race and then the enslavement of colored people. This enslavement happened for long time ago. In short the history of the United States is the history of enslavement. From this point of view, we may see how American life, claimed to be the most democratic country in the world, started his history by enslavement. Many historians argue that 1451 as the starting date for Atlantic slave trade, for that was when substantial numbers of African slaves, perhaps 700 to 800 a year, began to reach Portugal. The Atlantic slave trade therefore was generally seen as running from 1451 to 1870, roughly the effective end of the slave trade to American. 1 In 1619, the first Africans arrived at Jameskrwn, Virginia, consisting of twenty people with the status of “indentured” servants with the growth of slavery, many thousand of Negroes were brought to the cogaporelonies. 2 1 David M Brownstone and M, Frank Irene, Facts about America Immigration. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 2001, p. 321. 2 Everett D. Dyer. The American Family: Variety and Change, New York: McGraw–Hill Book Company, 1979, p. 60. For a long time period, American slavery under the white supremacist must go on until the end of 19 century. Finally, slavery period disappeared when Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation proclaimed, but the end of slavery came only with Union victory in the Civil War. In reality, however, Negro families were under white people’s shadows. For many years forward, the black people’s lives have to become under the shadow of white people. This subordination makes the fate of Black people into racial discrimination in every field of life such as in education, political, social life, occupation, etc. There is no right for black people to get equality as well as white people get. But the time change and the fate of black people also change. In the early of 20 century African American has little chance to gain their dream. One by one Black society has the raising stars just for his community in every formal or informal field such as preacher, politician, labor, literary figures, etc. They born not to be slave anymore but born to be fighter against intimidation, hatred, cruelty of white people in America. Slowly but sure during 1960s they were able to make American history more colorful with their mob most well known by the Civil Rights Movement. The struggle of African Americans for equality reached its climax in the mid- 1960s. During this time, the Civil Right movements spread in the rest of America soil, especially in the South, the bases of African American stay in. Since that time groups that previously had been submerged or subordinate began more forcefully and successfully to assert themselves: African Americans, Native Americans, women, the white ethnic offspring of the new immigration, and Latinos. Much of the support they received came from a young population larger than ever. They realize their future by making the mob possible through a college and university system, street long march, community gathering in various place and etc. They presented the countercultural life styles and radical politics, many of the young people of the World War II generation emerged as advocates of a new America characterized by a cultural and ethnic pluralism that their parents often viewed with discomfort. According to Leon E. Wynter, essayist and columnist for the Wall Street Journal , that the 1950s set up the social political and technological disorders of the 1960s and 1970s. This decade also became much more representative of the long- term pattern of American identity formation and thus perhaps is more important in understanding the meaning of the 1980s. 3 But America still remains the same before. Racial practices such as prejudice, discrimination, and personal abuse still haunted the colored people. In short, racism as cultural practice of white people became dominant theme during American history even today. Richard T. Ford, the George E. Osborne Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, argue that the day-to-day manifestations of group difference – folk beliefs, stories, and narratives, subjective identifications, outward expression of group affiliation and performances of “group culture” – are not reflections of intrinsic 3 Leon E. Wynter, American Skin, Pop Culture, Big Business the End of White America, New York: Crown Publisher, 2002, p. 72. human differences but rather are effects of social, political and legal institutions that produces and group difference. 4 The explanations above give us understanding what racial practices actually are happened in America history. Thus, from the study above, the writer is interested to make study about it as far as reflected in the movie Mississippi Burning, a movie by Alan Parker, outline the disappearances of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner, three young civil rights workers who were part of a voter registration drive in Mississippi. And then this case tries to reveal by two FBI Agents: Willem Defoe as Alan Ward and Gene Hackman as Rupert Anderson starred in this movie. Both of them met some difficulties while searching some clues and asking information from civilian whether the white or the black people. In fact, this investigation makes Jessup County’s public life most exposed by the news and television. For some group of white young men the fanatic’s followers of Ku Klux Klan of this county feel not comfortable. They intimidated who ever give information to two FBI agents. It is not surprisingly if they take any effort to make both of the agent go away from Jessup County. They are creating terror, burning house, making horrible kidnapping, vandalism etc. The majority of the movie takes place during 1964 in towns, exactly Jessup County of Mississippi. This movie surveys the geography of racism, segregation; discrimination, social hatred, bullying, etc., which caused the victim of three human 4 Richard T. Ford, Racial Culture, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005, p. 169. right workers. In addition, this movie was inspired by actual events which took place in the South during the 1960’s. The characters, however, are fictitious and do not depict real people either living or dead.

B. Focus of Study