Widely regarded at the time of its release as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid with a social conscience, Poitier stars as Buck, an ex-Union Army Cavalry sergeant who becomes a scout for freed slaves heading to the Colorado frontier. Tagging along with him are his wife (Ruby Dee in a scene-stealing performance) and a Bible-thumping con artist known as the Preacher (Belafonte). Attacked by racist bounty hunters determined to return the former slaves to a life of sharecropping in Louisiana, Buck and his followers must summon all the courage they have in order to reach their destination and help settle the Wild West.

A superbly crafted revisionist landmark, Buck and the Preacher subverts Hollywood conventions at every turn and reclaims the western genre in the name of Black liberation.