Quotes from
Mississippi Burning (1988)
Mayor Tilman: You know what, Anderson? You're starting to get so far up my nose, I'm beginning to feel your boots on my chin!Anderson: You know, if I were a Negro, I'd probably think the same way they do.
Ward: If you were a Negro, nobody would give a damn what you thought.
Sheriff Ray Stuckey: Do you like baseball, do you, Anderson?
Anderson: Yeah, I do. You know, it's the only time when a black man can wave a stick at a white man and not start a riot.
Ward: Some things are worth dying for.
Anderson: Down here, things are different; here, they believe that some things are worth killing for.
Anderson: Don't you have the whole world to save?
Deputy Pell: You got no right to be here. This is a political meeting.
Ward: Doesn't smell that way to me, Deputy.
Deputy Pell: It's a damn political meeting, Hoover Boy.
Ward: Oh, it looks like a political meeting, but smells more like Klan to me... with or without the Halloween costumes.
Ward: What's wrong with these people?
Deputy Clinton Pell: You have to be a member to drink here.
Anderson: Member? A member of what?
[long pause]
Deputy Clinton Pell: Member of the social club.
Anderson: Down here they say rattlesnakes don't commit suicide.
Frank Bailey: Now you listen here, you cornholin' fucker. You tell your queer-loving nigger bosses that they ain't never gonna find those civil rightsers! So you might as well pack up and go back where you came from and...
[Anderson grabs his crotch hard, Bailey screams in pain]
Anderson: [while grabbing Bailey by the balls] Now you listen here, Shitkicker! Don't you go confusin' me with some whole other body. You must be thinkin' with your dick if you think we're gonna just walk away from this. We're gonna stay 'till this gets done.
[after opening his coat and exposing his gun he turns to Deputy Pell]
Anderson: How 'bout you, Deputy. That gun of yours just for show or do you get to shoot people once in a while?
Anderson: [Releases his grip on Bailey, then takes a swig of beer] Thanks for the beer.
Clayton Townley: In the courts of Mississippi, they have been reminded, that they cannot, by force, turn our communities into replicas of their communities... communities in which negroes run riot, unrestrained and unpunished, as they do this summer in the streets of Harlem, or they do in the streets of Oakland, or they do in the STREETS OF CHICAGO!
Mrs. Pell: It's not good for you to be here.
Agent Anderson: Why?
Mrs. Pell: It's ugly. This whole thing is so ugly. Have you any idea what it's like to live with all this? People look at us and only see bigots and racists. Hatred isn't something you're born with. It gets taught. At school, they said segregation what's said in the bible... Genesis 9, Verse 27. At 7 years of age, you get told it enough times, you believe it. You believe the hatred. You live it... you breathe it. You marry it.
Mayor Tilman: Fact is, we got two cultures down here: a white culture, and a colored culture. Now, that's the way it always has been, and that's the way it always will be.
Anderson: Rest of America don't see it that way, Mr. Mayor.
Sheriff Ray Stuckey: Rest of America don't mean jack shit. You in Mississippi now.
Deputy Pell: Funny, their kids are so cute.
Mrs. Pell: You marry the first guy that makes you laugh.
[Clayton Townley is addressing a large audience at a night-time pro-white rally]
Clayton Townley: I love Mississippi.
Audience: YAY!
Clayton Townley: THEY! They hate Mississippi! They hate us because we represent a shining example of successful segregation. These Northern students, with their Communist, atheist bosses, and their wish to destroy us this week, has taken a terrible blow. This week, their cause has been crippled. This week, these federal policeman you see around here prying into our lives, violating out civil liberties have learned that they are powerless against us if every single Anglo-Saxon Christian one of us stands together!
[Agent Monk has kidnapped the mayor]
Agent Monk: You. I'm gonna tell you a story. A kid named Homer Wilkes lives 30 miles north of here. He'd just taken his girlfriend home and was walking along the road. A truck pulls up beside him. Four white boys took him for a ride. Now Homer, he headn't done anything, except be a Negro. They took him to a shack, a regular old shack like this one. Then they took out a razor blade.
[shows him a razor blade]
Agent Monk: Ragged old razor blade, like this one. They pulled down his pants, they spread his legs, and they sliced off his scrotum.
[shows him a coffee cup]
Agent Monk: Then they put it in a coffee cup, like this one. Mayor, do you know how much you bleed when someone cuts off your balls?
[throws the cup at him]
Agent Monk: HUH! When they found Homer, he looked like he head been dipped in blood up to his waist. He was barely alive when they got him to the hospital, and he can barely walk now.
Deputy Pell: Y'all think you can drive any ol' speed you want down here.
Goatee: You had us scared to death, man.
Deputy Pell: Don't you call me man, Jew boy!
Goatee: Yes, sir. What should I call you?
Deputy Pell: You don't call me nothing, nigger-loving Jew boy. You just listen.
Goatee: Yes, sir.
Frank Bailey: [sniffs Goatee] Christ! You even startin' to smell like a nigger, Jew boy.
Goatee: [to his passengers] Don't worry. We'll be all right.
Frank Bailey: Sure you will, nigger lover.
Floyd Swilley: He seen your face. That's not good him seein' your face.
Frank Bailey: Oh. It don't matter no more.
[kills Goatee]
Lester Cowans: [after the three civil rights workers are killed] You only left me a nigger, but at least I shot me a nigger.
Frank Bailey: [after kicking Aaron to the ground] You've already been told once, nigger! And we're not gonna tell you again. If you go making any more trouble by squawking them boot lips off to any of those Federal men, then we sure as hell are gonna have to put you in the ground, boy. And that's without a pine box. Do you understand ME!
[kicks him again]
Anderson: Did you make a speech like that the night you beat your wife?
Anderson: Make no mistake about it. I'll cut your head clean off and not give a damn how it reads in the report sheet!
Mrs. Pell: If you're ever in Des Moines, don't send me a postcard.
[about the black passenger]
Lester Cowans: I didn't kill him, I only shot him in the ass.
Anderson: We know. But your buddy sees it differently. He says YOU killed him. Now either you go on the record with us right now, or it'll be your ass we're talking about, not just the black kid's.
Mayor Tilman: This state's as dry as a martini, and we've got the alcoholics to prove it.
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