The Last White Knight

Byron “Delay” De La Beckwith sits before the camera, a wizened Southern gentleman. His interviewer is director Paul Saltzman, a Canadian Jewish liberal. The two men are antithetical: Beckwith is a Mississippi Klansman, and Saltzman is a former civil rights activist who went to the South during the 1960s. Their lives converged when Saltzman came to Beckwith’s town of Greenwood to fight the good fight, and wound up receiving a knuckle sandwich for his troubles. His assailant was Beckwith, and years later the two meet in the hope of reconciliation and mutual understanding.

The old Klansman is not forgiven, but he is humanized—a crucial distinction. Moderately intelligent and unfailingly polite, he’s a compelling subject; his racism is as fascinating as it is disturbing, and Saltzman coaxes out a humanity in this man that transcends ideology without diminishing its importance. The film branches out from these two, outlining the history of the postwar civil-rights movement as seen through the eyes of its warriors, including Harry Belafonte and some less-famous figures, all of whom put their lives on the line. From the story of individuals to the history of an American revolution, Saltzman brings us the personal and the large-scale, and his film is a provocative examination of their interaction.