Description:

Two men, one a white segregationist and Klansman, a life member of the Ku Klux Klan, and the other a white SNCC—Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee—civil rights worker, first met, violently, in Greenwood, Mississippi in 1965 and barely avoided ruining each other's lives. They meet 43 years later, on camera, to explore whether reconciliation is possible. Byron (Delay) de la Beckwith Jr. and ex-civil rights worker and filmmaker, Paul Saltzman, met and filmed over a 5-year period, beginning in 2007. Delay's father, Byron de la Beckwith, Sr., was a high-ranking official of the KKK and a founder of the White Citizens Council. In 1963, Delay's father murdered Medgar Evers, then head of the NAACP in Mississippi. Saltzman meets Delay for the first time since 1965 on the steps of the Leflore County Courthouse, the site where Beckwith Jr. punched Saltzman in the head. His ongoing conversations with Delay forms the narrative through-line of the film. Using graphic novel sequences the murder of Medgar Evers and the near-death experiences of Harry Belafonte and Jimmy Travis, all civil rights workers, at the hands of the KKK, are revisited. As the two individuals come together to discuss the current state of the world and how their feelings and opinions have changed, viewers will also hear from prominent figures about their stances on race relations.