This is a weird one by all accounts. Shortly after the so-called civil rights movement succeeded in forcing through legislation ostensibly to desegregate the country – in practice the Deep South – there is a backlash in Hicksville, USA which results in the Ku Klux Klan bombing a black church and murdering a young girl. The victim is the daughter of a light-skinned black man who is living the dream in Los Angeles. He decides to pass for white, infiltrate the Klan and…does he have a higher purpose, or does he simply want revenge?

The film takes a brave step in portraying a black villain as well, what was called at the time the hate that hate produced. But was hate, or rather race hate, the real problem?

The wisest words in this film appear at around ten and a half minutes. After a black man is refused service in a local diner, one of his friends tells him “No sense in going’ where you’re not wanted.”

The reality is that in the Deep South as everywhere else, society has deeply held social mores which may appear repugnant to outsiders, and when those outsiders take their crusades into these societies, they stir up only hatred and resentment. We can see the same thing happening in some African countries at the moment where the “gay rights” movement is viewed as yet another attempt by the Yankee “Imperialists” to impose their will on the people.

The propaganda today portrays blacks in the Deep South as living in virtual slavery, yet at the very beginning of this film we see a mature black woman driving up to her son in a car. Car ownership by blacks was widespread in 1960s America, indeed in 1955, Chuck Berry wrote a song called “No Money Down” in which he described how he bought his first car on credit before World War Two. Berry grew up in the Deep South.

Rather than forcibly desegregate the Deep South and enforce so-called affirmative action policies on the nation as a whole, the government of the day would have been better advised to give grants to black businesses and entrepreneurs, especially the young. Instead, the welfare system has created a poverty trap that persists to this day for blacks and increasingly for lower class whites.

Having said all that, this film by an independent film-maker better known for making weird stuff about astro-zombies, is a brave attempt at portraying the reality of desegregation, even though it misses the point.