The Black Klansman
The Black Klansman, originally released in 1966 under the name I Crossed the Color Line, is a low-budget feature film directed by Ted V. Mikels and starring Richard Gilden, Rima Kutner, Harry Lovejoy, Max Julien, Jakie Deslonde, and James McEachin. Plot. During the civil rights movement, an African-American man, Jerry Ellworth (Richard Gilden, a white actor), is a Los Angeles jazz musician with a white girlfriend. Meanwhile, in an Alabama diner, a young black man attempts to exercise his civil rights by sitting at a local diner. When the Ku Klux Klan learn of this , they firebomb a church, killing Jerry's daughter. By way of revenge, Jerry moves to Alabama to infiltrate the group responsible for his daughter's death. Jerry dons his disguise and becomes a member of the inner circle, befriending the local leader and his daughter, and soon exacts his revenge. Production. Mikels says he told Joe Solomon that he would not make the film "if I couldn’t make some good out of it. If we couldn’t justify everything and bring about a union of understanding between black and white and come to a conclusion that would leave people  saying, ‘Well, we better learn to get along, or else.’ If I couldn’t do that, I wouldn’t make the movie, so I won out there."