The anatomy of an unlikely hero, Son of the South, follows the process by which, in the summer of 1961 – the very summer that saw the birth of a fellow by the name of Barack Obama – the young Bob Zellner was transformed into the activist who would dedicate his life to the advent of human rights and social justice. The film explores what is at hand in changing us – what drives an Alabamian good ole boy to depart from what passed for ancestral southern wisdom, to reject the values and traditions of the society that raised him and to take a stand for his fellow human beings?
And indeed it is a dizzying sight on that Sunday afternoon, to see this story come alive through the voices of the men and women who lived it. Under Dr. Angelou’s canopy of peace, sits Bob Zellner and David Goodman, C.O.R.E’s Bob Wechsler and Shirley Sherrod
