Blaxploitation Education: Buck and the Preacher

Sidney Poitier joins the genre, providing a Black hero from the past to go along with the cool guys of the present.

Buck and the Preacher
Written by Ernest Kinoy and Drake Walker
Directed by Sidney Poitier
1972

Sidney Poitier kind of paved the way for the Blaxploitation genre. Before it really kicked off, he was the Black movie star, although he tended to stick to highbrow fare rather than the down-and-dirty, morally grey stories the genre would become known for. It could be argued that In the Heat of the Night was a precursor to later Blaxploitation films, with Poitier playing a take-no-nonsense Black authority figure who wouldn’t stand for being treated as inferior by racist white people. The scene when he responds to being slapped by a rich white guy by slapping him right back must have seemed like a joyous moment of retribution for Black audiences of the day. So it makes sense that he would get involved in the burgeoning movement of the early 70s where Black films starring Black heroes were made for Black audiences.

With Buck and the Preacher, Poitier made his directorial debut, and the movie gave him the chance to edge into the Blaxploitation genre with a Western that starred Black heroes and had them prevail over white racists who were continuing to hassle Black settlers in the years following the Civil War. The movie was originally supposed to be directed by Joseph Sargent, but he quit early in the filming process, reportedly due to disagreements with the stars, and Poitier took over.

The movie provides a solid example of good guys vs. bad guys in the old West, with lots of scenes of horses galloping across the wilderness, occasional shootouts, and a morally upright hero doing his best to help people in need. Poitier plays Buck, a guy who escorts Black settlers who are looking to make new homes for themselves after leaving the oppressive South, where they were still treated terribly even post-slavery and forced to work on plantations for their old enslavers. However, the rich white guys aren’t too happy about losing their labor force, so they’ve hired a bunch of guys to make things as bad as possible for the settlers, destroying their supplies and livestock, killing anyone who tries to fight back, and trying to convince them to return to the South and resume the work they had previously done.

Buck does his best to protect the settlers he’s escorting, but it seems like as soon as he leaves to take care of other business, the “night riders” show up and wreck everything. They’re trying to hunt him down and kill him too, since he’s a thorn in their side, and after barely escaping an ambush, he comes across Harry Belafonte, a sort of con man who is styling himself as an itinerant preacher as he travels across the West. Since Buck’s horse is worn out, he steals the Preacher’s horse while he’s bathing in a stream. That creates an antagonistic relationship as the Preacher comes after him to try to get his horse back, but as one can probably expect, the two of them end up teaming up to take out the night riders and help the settlers make it to their new home.

Belafonte is definitely the more entertaining of the pair. He’s a total goofball, always using flowery language to get out of scrapes and talking about how he’s a man of god, even though he mostly uses the huge Bible he carries around to secretly store a gun. He also has some really disgusting teeth, possibly due to decay from the tobacco he constantly has wedged in his cheek. He gets to have a bit of an arc throughout the movie, with it clear early on that he’s out to make money for himself, through robbery if necessary, but learning the importance of standing up against oppressors and helping those in need.

Poitier is more of a standard Western hero, all stoic and honorable. He’s going to help the settlers out of a sense of doing what’s right for people in his community, but it’s a losing battle since he’s so outnumbered. But the Preacher pushes him in unexpected directions, giving him information about where the night riders are headquartered and even coming up with a scheme in which they can rob a bank to get money to make up for the settlers’ destroyed supplies and ensure that they will be able to survive once they’ve established a home for themselves.

The other main member of the cast is Ruby Dee, playing Ruth, Buck’s love interest. I’m not sure if she’s meant to be his wife or just the woman he’s planning to settle down with, but she fills the role of being worried about his safety and hoping that the two of them can get away from all this violence and settle down somewhere in peace. She gets one of the most moving monologues of the movie, telling Buck that they have to move to Canada and saying, “You done what you could in this country, and it all end in fire and the grave. I ain’t gonna live in this land no more, you hear me? The war ain’t changed nothin’ and nobody. It’s like a poison is soaked into the ground. They don’t give us nothin’. Not no forty acres and no mule. And not freedom, neither.” It’s devastating, an acknowledgment that it seems like Black people are never going to get the fair treatment they deserve, no matter what era a story is told in. In the post-Civil War years, it may have seemed hopeful for some after the end of slavery, but oppression and murder were still facts of life. And the same was still true 100 years later, with the civil rights movement providing some promise but so many horrors continuing to persist. Scenes like this are what make this movie fit into the Blaxploitation genre, showing the continuing need for justice.

The other thing that fits into the genre is Black heroes winning over white bad guys, and Buck and the Preacher definitely manage to do that. There’s a great scene where they track the night riders to the town where they’ve holed up, and most of them are playing cards in a whorehouse. Buck is ready to burst in shooting, but the Preacher says to wait while he distracts them. He enters, telling them he has information about Buck’s whereabouts and wants to collect the reward they’re offering. After the madam tells him he has to leave because she’s afraid having a Black man in her establishment will ruin her reputation, he goes on a fiery rant against fornication, even turning it into a poem, saying “Fornication! That’s the way to ruination! Rich man marries him a mate, poor man he just fornicate!” The night riders are all enjoying the show, but of course, Buck interrupts things, giving them just enough time to recognize that he’s the guy they’re looking for before he blows them away.

As a Western, the movie works well enough, although it doesn’t really have any moments that make it stand out from other examples of the genre. But by focusing on Black characters and the way they’re still struggling for freedom even after they’ve supposedly been liberated, it adds a wrinkle that you don’t usually see. In these movies, the West often represents freedom and an opportunity for people to start new lives and build new communities. Even if settlers have to deal with rustlers, bandits, or other criminals that threaten their way of life, some white-hatted heroes will usually show up to make things right. But this movie acknowledges that this isn’t a likely outcome for Black people. There’s always going to be another racist white person who is ready to murder them for whatever reason they can find. That’s something Black communities would still be dealing with well into the 20th century (and in the 21st, to be honest), so Blaxploitation stories are going to continue to be needed, giving people some measure of satisfaction from what they see on screen, as well as the ever-present hope that equality may get here someday.