In the fall of 1959, Freda Gilroy arrives on the campus of Fisk University full of hope. Soon, the ugliness of the Jim Crow South intrudes, and she’s thrust into a movement for social change. Freda finds herself caught between two worlds, and two loves, and must decide how much she’s willing to sacrifice for the advancement of her people. In 1992 Chicago, Freda’s daughter, Tulip, is an ambitious PR professional on track for an exciting career, if workplace politics and racial microaggressions don’t get in her way. But with the ruling in the Rodney King trial weighing heavily on her, Tulip feels called to action. When she makes an irreversible professional misstep as she seeks to uplift her community, she must decide, just like her mother had three decades prior, what she’s willing to risk in the name of justice and equality.

Ruth Tuttle, an Ivy League-educated Black engineer, is married to a kind and successful man. He’s eager to start a family, but she's uncertain. She has never gotten over the baby she gave birth to --- and was forced to leave behind --- when she was a teenager. Returning home, Ruth discovers that the Indiana factory town of her youth is plagued by unemployment, racism and despair. As she begins digging into the past, she unexpectedly befriends Midnight, a young white boy who is also adrift and looking for connection. Just as Ruth is about to uncover a burning secret her family desperately wants to keep hidden, a traumatic incident strains the town’s already searing racial tensions, sending Ruth and Midnight on a collision course that could upend both their lives.