The plot is a deceptively simple one, about a free Black sharecropper (Bill Cosby, in a defiant, tough portrayal) in the post-Civil War West who catches for his son a fine black stallion. When the horse is stolen from the boy (George Spell), Cosby takes him on a quest to recover the animal.

Beautiful Gloria Foster offers great support as Cosby's wife, who is worried about the whole situation but understands and admires her husband's need to teach the boy to stand up for himself. The Cosby character's fierce insistence on personal dignity is partially what has led to the whole thing, and both he and his wife understand the price that must be paid for this.

I hesitate to talk about what Cosby and Spell encounter in their hunt, but there are a couple of key events that have highly informative subtexts about the African-American struggle, both during the days of Reconstruction and in the wake of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement.

Yaphet Kotto plays a former rival for Foster's attentions who mocks Cosby's dignity as foolish pretension, and Douglas Turner Ward turns in what might be the film's best performance as a grizzled, wounded black desperado. Both characters can be read as representing different attitudes taken by certain elements of the black population toward the civil rights warriors of the '60s. Nothing is presented in a pedantic, by-the-numbers way, so the film isn't preachy about its added agenda. But for those who care to pick them up, these subtexts give "Man and Boy" a weight and stature that is superior to "Buck and the Preacher" or any of the other Black-oriented Westerns of the period.

It's great to see "Man and Boy" come to DVD. This is the kind of thoughtful rumination on the Black experience that is all too rare today.