Using dramatic reenactments, archival photographs, and historical texts, the History Channel presents an unsettling glimpse of the world of the post-Civil War South. The film is focused squarely on the crimes of racial hate and vengeance that plagued former slaves and those sympathetic to the Radical Republican agenda.

In some ways, this film directed by and starring Clint Eastwood could be described as a modern day Birth of a Nation. Josey Wales remains loyal to the Confederacy after its defeat in the Civil War and utilizes unlawful means to avenge the death and destruction he witnesses.

Based on the bestselling novel by Georgia-born author Margaret Matchell, this hit Hollywood romance about the American South during and after the Civil War did a great deal, like Birth of a Nation, to shape 20th-century attitudes about race and the legacies of slavery, the war, and Radical Reconstruction.

The hero of director D.W. Griffith's cinematic masterpiece—a record-breaking, box-office hit from the early-20th century—is a white Southerner who helps form the Ku Klux Klan to free the South from the supposed tyranny of Reconstruction-era Blacks. The film, with its electrifying performances, spectacular special effects, and provocative story, captivated white audiences and drew vigorous protests from African-American civil rights organizations such as the NAACP.