President John F. Kennedy and his brother Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy face down Governor George Wallace of Alabama who has sworn to personally block the entrance of two black students (Vivian Malone and James Hood) into the campus of The University of Alabama. The intimacy of the documentarian's camera with the principal characters is stunning (such openness in a politician seems unthinkable now) and the discussions about how to diffuse an ostensibly simple but in fact incredibly complicated problem are fascinating (as are the futures of all involved).