Although racial profiling, civil unrest, and haves and have-nots remain in the news to this day, the movement for equal rights in the United States has in fact made great strides in the past half-century. For some Southern communities, such progress was hard fought, slow moving, and in at least one instance, achieved by unheard-of collaboration. Now at Matrix Theatre Company with direction by Kelly Komlen, playwright Mark St. Germain’s “Best of Enemies” retraces an unholy alliance across the racial divide that developed into a fruitful and eventually amicable partnership.

St. Germain’s script, based on the book “The Best of Enemies” by Osha Gray Davidson, recounts the true story of public school integration in Durham, North Carolina. In 1971, almost two decades after the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision rendered school segregation unconstitutional, Durham remained strictly divided, with the black schools far behind the white ones in terms of quality and resources. But growing government pressure for the schools to integrate was met with vandalism and violence from both sides, which prompted city leadership to intervene.

The resulting “charrette,” or strategy session, was shepherded by Bill Riddick (Dez Cortez Crenshaw), who for his co-chairs pursued two community leaders that could not be more at odds. Black grass-roots activist Ann Atwater (Katie Fullerton) and white Ku Klux Klan member C.P. Ellis (Joshua Robert Brown) are introduced to the viewer as outspoken, vehement agitators for their respective “people,” each with just enough knowledge of the other to offer their unapologetic hatred.

Over a series of terse vignettes, Riddick’s appeals to protect the best interests of each side force Atwater and Ellis together, as they bicker, make concessions, begrudgingly find common ground, and eventually work in tandem with something that looks more and more like respect and understanding. The scenes roll out quickly as parallel beats on a wide, unbroken set (by scenic and properties designer Lisa Charlotte Berg), an oversized literal gray area ominously packed with symbolic crosses. Although the script doesn’t state it explicitly, time here is as fluid as place, and costume designer Kirstin Bianchi prods the characters forward across days, months, and eventually years, with gentle nods to era as well as economic class along the way. Yet although the scripted story eschews boundaries, the scenes and settings are heavily regimented (and tension consequently broken) by Amy Schneider’s tightly keyed-in lighting design and sound by Michael Hallberg that bullet-points rather than dovetails the scenes.

The single-act play is on a fast track toward compassion; here, the bouts of politicized invective progress so quickly that it can be hard to pick up on the nuances of human personality that make these types into people and these particular people into friends. Fullerton’s fearless Atwater has an innate sense of command that neither overcompensates nor has a scrap of spare energy to enjoy her evident wit. Brown is handed the more dynamic story arc, drifting from Ellis’s easy, untouchable superiority toward a conflicted persona with troubled home and work lives and a wit’s-end spouse (Vanessa Sawson). Crenshaw treads carefully with Riddick’s diplomacy, although his brittle smile is peeled back just once to reveal his true motivations – another tight-lipped outburst in a play already full of them.

Change of any kind is hard won, and this is tough subject matter; feelings of bleakness and desperation definitely resonate in this production. But despite the struggle, the production’s most compelling moments are not in the characters’ gains, but in their admissions of loss. Paying the price for fraternizing with the enemy, Atwater and Ellis bond over being ostracized from their communities, and lament the consequences their children must also suffer. As intriguing as this story is, its repercussions on these two individuals – and the unique connection they share because of them – are the show’s secret treasure. While the script boils down historical societal success into footnotes, the production’s frank exploration of the personal costs of being an instrument of change is some emotionally resonant food for thought.