Blacksplotation Or A Creepy Look At The Social Injustices Of The 1960s?

Also Known as I Crossed the Color Line

This is a "social issues" film from 1966 about a light skinned black man who passes for white to infiltrate the KKK and to get revenge on the man that killed his daughter. The film makers were kind enough to explain the plot in a song played over the opening credits just in case you didn't understand the synopsis or film reviews. 

Jazz daddy Jerry Elsworth is living the life in LA, he's a musician who has a white girlfriend, black and white friends and is all around just one cool cat. He's so cool he risks his own safety to obtain pictures to document, what I assume to be, the Watts Rebellion for his white friend who is a journalist. He's so cool that getting bricks hurled at him doesn't even phase him. One night after a seemingly long sex session with his girl, who keeps hassling him about marriage, he receives a call from someone informing him that his daughter was killed after being fire bombed by the Klan during an evening church service. Jerry goes insane with anger and grief and yells at his girlfriend that she's a white woman and she needs to get out of his bed, he then goes on to choke that bitch out. Don't worry, Jerry catches himself before killing her and then he runs and runs and runs down a long tunnel with all of the terrible voices ringing in his head of just a few minutes ago.

What started all of Jerry's problems? A young black man read in the newspaper that the Civil Rights bill was passed and he wanted to go into town to see if it was true, he wanted to get a cup of coffee at a local cafe that should have been desegregated but wasn't. Whitey didn't appreciate the young man's attempt at dignity and equality so they do a night raid and hang the kid and fire bomb the church but hit little Mary Elsworth with the molotov cocktail instead. 

Jerry decides that if he shaves that merkin off of his chin and wears a bad wig of straight hair he'll be able to pass and join the Klan in his hometown. 

That's not a soul patch, that's a Brillo Pad.

And of course he does and he quickly gains the respect and confidence of the local Klan leader. He even nails that son of bitch's very white and blond daughter. I wish they would have done a sequel taking place nine moths later documenting the struggles of a single unwed mother of a biracial child who goes from racist hater to civil rights pioneer. Not really. 

Jerry gets his wish and is initiated into the Klan.

Buck up Jerry, that's a three hundred thread count Egyptian cotton sheet you're wearing.

Jerry finds his daughter's killer and exacts his revenge by shooting the bastard or maybe the guy just drives into a tree and dies that way. I don't know, that part was just a ridiculous clusterfuck of too many ideas going on at once.

I have some issues with this film. The first one, if Jerry loved his daughter so damn much, why did he leave her with his mother in a hotbed of racism and hate? Since LA was such a damn paradise for him, maybe he should have moved the whole damn family out with him? This is the one that bothers me the most, his stupid girlfriend follows him. He tries to kill her in a rage because she's white and she decides it's a good idea to follow him to his daughter's funeral and try maybe to patch things up? Couldn't the film makers also have throw in a little bit of women's lib into the mix with her telling Jerry to go fuck off after he nearly chokes her to death? And the subplot of the two Harlem radicals being brought into town to show the African American residents how to fight back with violence was clunky and drug on for longer than needed.  

One bright spot was the "Hey it's that guy!" moment when Grady pops up on the screen. Whitford Mayo of Sanford and Son fame has a small but important role, important to me anyway. He plays the owner of the towns only black bar and black hotel and he has hell of a lot more common sense than anyone else in this film. Way to go Grady! 

Whitford Mayo AKA Grady and some other guy.