Interestingly enough, Holdt was also able, on a fair number of occasions, to get invited into the homes of some of the wealthiest, most famous, and most powerful people in America. His pictures of these people and their surroundings are interspersed throughout the slideshow to provide the audience with a stark contrast between the extremes of oppression and privilege which Holdt says are inextricably intertwined. Holdt's presentation is divided into two parts. Part one focuses on rural poverty in the South. Part two deals with the ghetto poverty of the North.
Part one begins with slavery.
The presentation opens with slides of drawings depicting slaves being brought to America. Haunting music with accompanying lyrics send us, the audience, back to the time of travesty and pain for the human cargo that had been torn from their home and pent, packed like animals, to toil and die in a strange land far away. We then see pictures of the field hands with whom Holdt stayed. These were field hands who worked the cotton and tomato fields of Florida, the tobacco fields of North Carolina, and the sugar cane fields of Louisiana. Holdt saw that the migrant camps that housed these workers offered conditions of life long thought to have disappeared.