Liberal students from Northern cities drive to the South to encourage social justice reform. The overture is confusing with a realism from criminals in office and a hint of national sentiment leaning towards equality for all.

White dilettante Carol Lee Byrd and her two friends are arrested by mean racist Sheriff Engstrom in the deep south for trying to encourage local browbeaten black citizens to become registered voters. After her friends are both killed, Byrd gets abducted by two sleazy rednecks who keep her in a secluded cabin so they can use her as their own personal sex slave.—Woodyanders

Five young students volunteer to aid in registering Negro voters in Lovingboro, Mississippi. In an attempt to intimidate the civil rights workers, the racist Sheriff Engstrom has one of the workers beaten up. When this fails to work, he tries to frighten three of the workers into returning to the North. One of the workers, Bernie Samuelson, is accidentally killed, and the sheriff decides that he must also kill Tyrone Carver and Carol Byrd, witnesses to the crime. Carver is killed, and the sheriff instructs the Loving brothers to bury the men and dispose of Carol. She persuades the Loving brothers to spare her in return for a ransom to be paid by her brother Dick, a Hollywood actor. Her brother arrives with the money, and he entertains himself with a black prostitute while he awaits his sister. Luther Barnes, a black civil rights worker, decides to try to find Carol on his own. In the meantime, Phil Loving sends his brother Andy to collect the ransom.