Son and grandson of a pastor, Jacob Holdt chose in 1970, after yet another confrontation with his father, to go to Canada to work on a farm. A few months later, he decided to leave for Chile, then in full political turmoil. Shortly after crossing the border that separates Canada from the United States, he was the victim of an attack perpetrated by two members of the black community. Very shocked by such violence, he began searching for the perpetrators of the attack, to understand what could have motivated this act. He discovers a reality for which neither his education nor the available information had prepared him. To try to understand why in such a rich country, almost the entire black community is kept in such a state of poverty and distress, Jacob Holdt travels the United States, sharing through chance encounters the miserable living conditions of the black American community, discovering, a little more every day, the racism that strikes it. He relates this reality in long letters to his friends remaining in Denmark and to his father. Incredulous, his father sent him a small camera so that he could provide proof of what he was saying. Jacob Holdt thus undertakes a photographic journal of which he still does not know the extent and, above all, what will become of it. The young man had no experience as a photographer at that time. Yet over the course of these five years, Jacob Holdt accumulated a most moving and unique photographic testimony to the United States of that era. To do this, he will hitchhike 200,000 km, live with locals, sell his blood to buy film. He will rub shoulders not only with the black community but also with other categories of the country's population, including the wealthiest white community. This association even extends to certain members of the Ku Klux Klan, always with this sometimes naive desire to understand the mechanisms of this violent and primary racism.