Robert Harper

A wealthy New Orleans businessman becomes obsessed with a young woman who resembles his late wife.

Two black brothers in a traveling minstrel show in the early part of the twentieth century have two different goals. One brother is determined to succeed in a field that is dominated by white performers in blackface, and the other is a composer fighting to break away from the stereotypes associated with black minstrel performers.

In the turn of the century South, a woman feels unfulfilled by marriage and motherhood and has an affair with a younger man. Later, the woman leaves her family and tries to start a new life alone.

During the 1960s' civil rights movement, a black civil rights worker returns to his small Southern town and runs for sheriff against the incumbent, a popular segregationist.