The film, produced by the United States Information Agency, was not intended for general public viewing, but it received such good advance notices that the agency eventually let Embassy Pictures release it to theaters. A soundtrack album, featuring both music and narration, was made in both mono and stereo by Capitol Records.
The film, about the administration of assassinated US President John F. Kennedy, received a much wider and more generalized distribution than Four Days in November (1964), a film also about Kennedy, even playing in theaters that regularly screened big-screen blockbusters.
Neither Martin Luther King or any other prominent African-American leader appears in the Civil Rights sequence. James Meredith is mentioned but never shown. King is never mentioned in the film.