Based on Bob Zellner's autobiography, The Wrong Side of Murder Creek: A White Southerner in the Freedom Movement, Lucas Till portrays Zellner, with Lex Scott Davis, Lucy Hale, Jake Abel, Shamier Anderson, Julia Ormond, Cedric the Entertainer and Brian Dennehy (in his final film role) appearing in supporting roles.

The film opens on April 5, 1961, and focuses on Bob Zellner, who is the son of a Methodist minister, a senior attending all-White Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabama.

Seeking information with which to write research papers on race relations, Zellner and four fellow students attend an event held in a Baptist Black church to mark the fifth anniversary of the 1955–1956 Montgomery bus boycott.

Facing suspicion at first from black SNCC activists, he proves his bona fides by protesting alongside them, narrowly escaping a lynching by rural, white southerners while in McComb, Mississippi after a march to the county courthouse on October 30, 1961.

[3] In April 2019, Lucas Till, Lucy Hale, Lex Scott Davis, Julia Ormond, Cedric the Entertainer, Mike Manning, Sharonne Lainer, Brian Dennehy, Chaka Forman, Shamier Anderson, Jake Abel, Ludi Lin,[4] Onye Eme-Akwari, Dexter Darden, and Matt William Knowles[5] joined the cast of the film.