The first major Hollywood studio (Warner Bros.) feature film directed by an African-American (Gordon Parks).
This film was selected as one of the first 25 films for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 1989 (the first year of inductions) for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
This production had the largest contingent of African-American crew members up to that time - 12 in all - despite opposition from Hollywood unions, which were all white at the time. Gordon Parks stated he received "enormous cooperation" from Warner Bros. to accomplish this feat.
According to an article in the 19 June 1969 edition of Daily Variety, William Conrad acted as the executive producer throughout the production, but took no credit as he wanted this film to be known as "Gordon's story".