The Last White Knight

Paul Saltzman, director of The Last White Knight, travelled from Canada in 1965 to Mississippi as a civil rights activist hoping to become involved in the voting drive for blacks, who had been intimidated, bullied and even murdered to deny them a basic, constitutional right. Already a hotbed of anti-black belligerence, the town of Greenwood was no different from any town in the south in its determination to keep blacks disenfranchised and politically marginalized.

Saltzman was accosted one day by a group of young, white Greenwood citizens; one of them being Delay de la Beckwith, son of the infamous Byron de la Beckwith; murderer of Medgar Evers. The confrontation prompted Delay to hit Saltzman in the face, causing him to flee in fear. Saltzman managed to outrun his assailants, living to accomplish his mission.

Many years later, well into our current century, Saltzman decided to reestablish contact with Delay in hopes of meeting with him for a sort of reconciliation. The two eventually come face to face for a series of meetings and for interviews, which form the narrative nucleus of The Last White Knight. Saltzman can be credited for initiating what makes a fascinating and also disquieting documentary.

The meeting also serves to personalize the history of the 1960s' civil rights movement in the south. Much of film covers familiar ground; the murders of Evers and the three civil rights workers Cheney, Goodman and Schwerner and the ever-present threat of violence but Saltzman also interviews black townspeople as well as members of the new KKK, who wouldn't agree to appear on film sans robes and hoods. Participants like Harry Belafonte, who served as an advisor to Martin Luther King and Mississippi residents like Morgan Freeman weigh in on past and present relations and what course they may take henceforth.

But it is the conversations between Delay de la Beckwith and Saltzman that make for exceptional viewing. Delay's onscreen, personable demeanor masks a deep-seated disdain for blacks, which hasn't wavered since his youth while Saltzman seeks a kind of rapprochement and maybe an admission that Delay's father was wrong to kill Evers. "The past is never dead. It's not even past," William Faulkner once said and it applies to Saltzman's film, which doesn't deceive us into believing race conflict is something quaint and of the 20th century. Though progress has been made, The Last White Knight shows us there's always ground still to be gained and a past to be appeased.