In 1915, a blockbuster film about the Civil War and Reconstruction spreads across the United States, painting Black people as violent and inferior while glorifying the Ku Klux Klan as national saviors. It becomes one of the first movies screened at the White House and draws huge white audiences, helping spark a new wave of Klan organizing and racist attacks. City by city, the film shapes how people understand history and gives cover to new violence in the present.

Against this, Black newspaper editor and long-time civil rights leader William Monroe Trotter wages an aggressive campaign to stop the film from playing in Boston. As the editor of The Guardian and a central Black voice in the city, he uses his position to call out The Birth of a Nation as a direct threat to Black safety and dignity. While some national organizations rely mainly on petitions, legal appeals, and quiet negotiation, he pushes harder—organizing mass meetings, packed picket lines, and loud protests at theater doors. His tactics bring clashes with police, arrests, and pressure from city officials who want to protect business interests.

The documentary follows how Trotter confronts Boston’s mayor, helps force the creation of a local film censorship board, and models a more confrontational style of Black leadership. At the same time, it shows the limits of these efforts: the movie still screens widely and the Klan continues to grow. Even so, his fight marks a key early moment in organized resistance to racist media and foreshadows more militant tactics in later civil rights struggles.