Sidney Poitier’s directorial debut, Buck and the Preacher, employs the genre’s traditional narratives to challenge notions of freedom for African Americans in the post–Civil War West as they face relentless pursuit by racist bounty hunters. Buck (Poitier), a former Union soldier turned trail guide, and the Preacher, a con artist (Harry Belafonte), lead a group of freed slaves to safety in the West, away from the pervasive racism of the South. A trembling suspension between the two men builds as they play cat and mouse across dusty frontier trails, creating an unsettling allegory about the tenuous and often conflicted alliances that Black individuals had to forge in the face of systemic oppression.