Missisipi Burning

Recently, we were given the show, Mississippi burning to watch. It is a really, really old film, about racism. It depicts the lives of the blacks and how they were treated by the Ku Klux Klan, a group of people that used to be a political party. Their main aim is to achieve control over the blacks. To reach their goal, they lynch the blacks, and use other cruel methods to torture them. The blacks are afraid to oppose, and can only try to defend themselves from being lynched as far as possible. But why are they afraid to oppose? Is it because the Ku Klux Klan outnumber and outgun them, or they just simply did not feel like fighting for their rights, because the others did not?