The film "Mississippi Burning" is based on a true story. It all happens in a small town in Mississippi, the year 1964. Three civil rights workers, Michael Swerner, James Chaney and Anrew Goodman, are driving a car, but pulls over when they see that the police are after them. But it weren’t only policemen, but also Klansmen. They shoot the civil rights workers and deposit their bodies in an earthen dam at a nearby farm.

Two FBI agents, Ward and Anderson, arrive to investigate the disappearance of the three civil rights workers. After meeting the sheriff they inquire about the three men. The sheriff tells them a story that they don’t belief. The agents are surprised to see that the town is so racially segregated. All the residents that they question either choose to remain tight-lipped, or have no information to give. The Klan is watching the black people. Whenever one of the agents talks to one of the blacks, the Klan threatens them even more.

The car that the three civil rights workers drove was found in a sump. Agent Ward orders over 200 agents to the small town to help conduct a search party. This provokes a war. The angry townspeople burn down other people’s homes, kidnap them and beat some of them up; they even hang a man.

The shifty-eyed deputy has an alibi for the time the three men disappeared, and it’s a good alibi, except why would he have an alibi so well, for precisely that time, unless he needed one? 50 minutes of the alibi depends on the word of his wife. At last, she can’t take any more of her husbands cruelty, and tells some important information to agent Anderson. She also tells him that hate get thought at school, were they refer to the Bible.

After the bodies were found, the deputy’s wife gets beaten up by the deputy himself. This makes Anderson angry, and he decides that he wants to go after them his own way. After a scuffle between the two agents, Anderson get’s Ward’s authority to try to do it his own way. Anderson then proceeds to use iron-fisted methods to get some of the residents to give them the answers that they are searching for. These methods to get some of the residents to give them the answers that they are searching for. These methods work brilliantly. The murders get identified and the wheel of justice starts to grid.