[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 ...
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...
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.
Mayor Tilman: 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.
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......
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 Stucke...
Ward: Just don't lose sight of whose rights are being violated! Anderson: Don't put me on your perch, Mr. Ward. Ward: Don't drag me into your gutter, Mr. Anderson! Anderson: These people are crawling out of the SEWER, MR. WARD! Maybe the gutter's whe...
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!
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: Get this straight, you corn-holin' fucker. You tell your queer-ass nigger bosses that they ain't never gonna find those civil rightsers down here! So you might as well pack up and go back up North where you came from and... [Anderson gr...
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.
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 ...
Anderson: Make no mistake about it, Deputy. I'll cut your fucking head clean off and not give a shit how it reads in the report sheet!
[the mayor has hung himself] Agent Bird: I don't understand why he did it. He wasn't in on it. He wasn't even Klan. Ward: Mr. Bird, he was guilty. Anyone's guilty who lets these things happens and pretends like it isn't. No, he was guilty all right. ...
[Ward stops Anderson from taking vigilante action against Pell] Ward: We'll go after all of them. Together. Anderson: You wouldn't know how! Ward: You're going to *teach me* how. Anderson: You don't have the GUTS! Ward: Not only do I HAVE the guts I ...
Television Commentator: Your name, please. Clayton Townley: Clayton Townley, local businessman. Television Commentator: Are you, sir, a spokesman for the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan? Clayton Townley: I told you, I'm a businessman. I'm also a Mi...
Ward: What's wrong with these people?
