Mississippi Report – Presidential Power and the Civil Rights Movement

Michael Tigar’s Notes:

Mississippi Report,  August 21, 1964.  In a talk I did at about this time, I discussed Presidential power to stop the pattern of killings, arson and torture in Mississippi. I discussed President Eisenhower’s use of federal authority to integrate the Little Rock schools in 1957, and traced the origins of Presidential power to President Washington’s actions during the Whiskey Rebellion. I spoke from notes, and I include those because they have relevant citations. The first page, typewritten, is a toll of attacks on the civil rights movement.  I include this item because of a conversation I had with Ninth Circuit Judge John T. Noonan in the late 1980s about the motion picture Mississippi Burning. Judge Noonan thought that the movie was overdone, and said that there could not possibly have been so much violence directed at the civil rights movement in the Summer of 1964. I looked back at these numbers in my file and sent the information to him.