The Last White Knight is a documentary by Canadian filmmaker Paul Saltzman about his meetings with Delay de la Beckwith, son of Byron de la Beckwith, who assassinated Medgar Evers. [1] In the film, Saltzman also interviewed Harry Belafonte, Morgan Freeman and others active in the civil rights movement. Belafonte's line, “People tell me that things have changed. And yet, I don’t trust Mississippi", is a key line from the film. [2]
The film was inspired by Saltzman's first encounter with the younger de la Beckwith in the early 1960s and their discussions decades later, following the unsealing of the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission's archives, are the core of the film whose title comes from de la Beckwith's standing as the last member of his family involved with the Klan. [2] [3] [4]
The documentary screened at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival and the 2013 Boston Jewish Film Festival. [5] [6]
Harry Belafonte is an American singer, activist, and actor. As arguably the most successful Jamaican-American pop star, he popularized the Trinbagonian Caribbean musical style with an international audience in the 1950s. His breakthrough album Calypso (1956) was the first million-selling LP by a single artist.
Medgar Wiley Evers was an American civil rights activist and the NAACP's first field secretary in Mississippi, who was murdered by Byron De La Beckwith. Evers, a decorated U.S. Army combat veteran who had served in World War II, was engaged in efforts to overturn segregation at the University of Mississippi, end the segregation of public facilities, and expand opportunities for African Americans including the enforcement of voting rights.
Byron De La Beckwith Jr. was an American murderer, a white supremacist and a member of the Ku Klux Klan from Greenwood, Mississippi. He murdered the civil rights leader Medgar Evers on June 12, 1963. Two trials in 1964 on that charge, with all-white Mississippi juries, resulted in hung juries. In 1994, he was tried by the state in a new trial which was based on new evidence. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Beckwith is a township in eastern Ontario, Canada. It is located in Lanark County on the Mississippi River. It is located within Canada's National Capital Region.
Robert Lepage is a Canadian playwright, actor, film director, and stage director.
Ghosts of Mississippi is a 1996 American biographical courtroom drama film directed by Rob Reiner and starring Alec Baldwin, Whoopi Goldberg, and James Woods. The plot is based on the true story of the 1994 trial of Byron De La Beckwith, the white supremacist accused of the 1963 assassination of civil rights activist Medgar Evers.
Samuel Holloway Bowers was a convicted murderer and a leading white supremacist in Mississippi during the Civil Rights Movement. He was Grand Dragon of the Mississippi Original Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, appointed to his position by Imperial Wizard Roy Davis. Following breakup of the Original Knights in 1964, he co-founded the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and became its first Imperial Wizard. Bowers was best known for committing two murders of civil rights activists in southern Mississippi. He was responsible for the 1964 murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner near Philadelphia, for which he served six years in federal prison; and the 1966 murder of Vernon Dahmer in Hattiesburg, for which he was sentenced to life in prison, 32 years after the crime. He also was accused of bombings of Jewish targets in the cities of Jackson and Meridian in 1967 and 1968. He died in prison at the age of 82.
The Dubai International Film Festival is the largest film festival in the Arab region. With particular emphasis on showcasing Arab, Asian, and African cinema, it also helps to develop industry and talent in the region. is held in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
Jerry W. Mitchell is an American investigative reporter formerly with The Clarion-Ledger, a newspaper in Jackson, Mississippi. He convinced authorities to reopen cold murder cases from the civil rights era, prompting one colleague to call him "the South's Simon Wiesenthal". In 2009, he received a "genius grant" from the MacArthur Foundation.
Mississippi Cold Case is a 2007 feature documentary produced by David Ridgen of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation about the Ku Klux Klan murders of two 19-year-old black men, Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore, in Southwest Mississippi in May 1964 during the Civil Rights Movement and Freedom Summer. It also explores the 21st-century quest for justice by the brother of Moore. The documentary won numerous awards as a documentary and for its investigative journalism.
David Ridgen is an independent Canadian filmmaker born in Stratford, Ontario. He has worked for CBC Television, MSNBC, NPR, TVOntario and others. He is currently the writer, producer and host of CBC Radio’s true-crime podcast series, Someone Knows Something and The Next Call.
Paul Saltzman is a Canadian film and television producer and director. A two-time Emmy Award-recipient, he has been credited on more than 300 films, both dramas and documentaries.
Boris Malagurski is a Serbian-Canadian film director, producer, writer, political commentator, television host, and activist. His films include the documentary series The Weight of Chains.
Prom Night in Mississippi is a 2009 Canadian-American documentary film written and directed by Paul Saltzman. The documentary follows a group of 2008 Charleston High School high school seniors in Charleston, Mississippi as they prepare for their senior prom, the first racially integrated prom in Charleston history.
Gracie Otto is an Australian filmmaker and actor. She made her feature-length directing debut with the 2013 documentary The Last Impresario about prolific British theatre impresario and film producer Michael White. She has also directed a variety of screen content such as television commercial videos (TCVs), shorts, television series, feature films and documentaries.
Freedom Riders is a 2010 American historical documentary film, produced by Firelight Media for PBS American Experience. The film is based in part on the book Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice by historian Raymond Arsenault. Directed by Stanley Nelson, it marked the 50th anniversary of the first Freedom Ride in May 1961 and first aired on May 16, 2011. It was funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The film was also featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show program titled, Freedom Riders: 50th Anniversary. Nelson was helped in the making of the documentary by Arsenault and Derek Catsam, an associate professor at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin.
"Sweet, Sweet Blues" is an episode of the NBC drama series In the Heat of the Night, starring Carroll O'Connor as Chief Bill Gillespie and Howard Rollins as Detective Virgil Tibbs. In the Heat of the Night was based on the 1965 novel by John Ball, which was also the basis for the Academy Award winning film of the same name starring Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger, directed by Norman Jewison.
John Kemeny was a Hungarian-Canadian film producer whom the Toronto Star called "the forgotten giant of Canadian film history and...the most successful producer in Canadian history." His production credits include The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, Atlantic City, and Quest for Fire.
Aarti Shrivastava is a national award-winning Indian documentary filmmaker and Asia 21 IPRYLI Fellow based in Mumbai.
BlacKkKlansman is a 2018 American biographical black comedy crime thriller film directed by Spike Lee and written by Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, Kevin Willmott and Lee, based on the 2014 memoir Black Klansman by Ron Stallworth. The film stars John David Washington as Stallworth, along with Adam Driver, Laura Harrier, and Topher Grace. Set in the 1970s in Colorado Springs, Colorado, the plot follows the first African-American detective in the city's police department as he sets out to infiltrate and expose the local Ku Klux Klan chapter.