40,000 robed Ku Klux Klansmen marching down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., in 1925, voicing and representing their opposition to the participation of African-Americans, Catholics, and Jews in American life. Followed by an engraving of European settlers coming to the shores of the New World so they could express and practice their religious beliefs without being persecuted. The narrator then documents how those who sought freedom from persecution became the persecutors of those who did not share their beliefs.