‘Mississippi’ Mud

Patrick Goldstein’s cover story in the June 5 Calendar on the filming of “Mississippi Burning,” about the 1964 slayings of three civil rights workers, reinforces the idea that a combination of education and activism can break down even the worst of stereotypes (“Another Long Hot Summer,” June 5).

Thus, most white Mississippians today recognize that the system of segregation that had long traumatized the state and that had deprived blacks of even the most elementary of human rights was an evil system that had to give way to the promises enshrined in the Constitution of the United States.

It was thus with considerable chagrin and a sense of disgust that I read the statement of John Horhn, the black executive director of the federal-state programs in Mississippi, that the “Jewish community controls the media” in the United States.

I am not surprised that this canard is still around, but I am shocked that it could be repeated (and presumably believed) by an educated person whose job it is to bring people of various ethnic and cultural backgrounds together for the benefit of the greater society.

I agree with Horhn that “all people must know where they come from” and I would hope that Horhn would join me in hoping that all people should learn to recognize false concepts, whether they be ones of “outside agitators” coming in to destroy the Southern way of life, or of Jews controlling the press in America.

DONALD L. SINGER

Redlands