BROTHERHOOD

A fascinating, and shockingly relatable, story of the KKK's rise in the reconstruction-era South and one boy's struggle to do what's right.

Shadrach and his brother, Jeremy, live with their widowed mother on a hardscrabble tenant farm outside Richmond, Virginia. The year is 1867, and the South has lost the Civil War. A devastated Richmond is occupied by the hated Yankees, who have a foot on the neck of the defeated Southerners. Everyone is poor, with little hope of improving their lives, and those on the lowest rungs, like Shad’s family, fear that the freed slaves will undercut them and take the few jobs available. In this climate of despair and fear, a group has formed that purports to defend the women and families of Confederate soldiers, but instead is terrorizing the black inhabitants of the area. Today we know it as the KKK. Shad, following his brother, is drawn into the group before he understands its true purpose. Meanwhile, desperate to learn to read, he is secretly attending a school for black children, run by a wealthy Richmond woman. Inevitably the worlds collide in a tragic event.