AllMovie

This four-part series of documentaries examining racial issues opens with a profile of Siler City, N.C., a town that was once half white and half black. Now it's one-third Hispanic, and that, says Rev. Neil Kight, a local pastor, has "changed the whole picture." The hour explores reasons for the migration (a lack of jobs in the area of Mexico where many newcomers were born; a local chicken-processing plant's need for workers); and how it has changed life in Siler City (particularly in the schools, where Hispanic enrollment has risen from 10 to 500 in five years). Despite some incidents, folks are mostly cordial, but some whites and blacks are uneasy, and there isn't much mixing. Still, says writer Ruben Martinez, immigration "is blowing wide open our notions of race, identity and class."