Presented in alternating narratives, Patricia Stephens Due and her daughter Tananarive tell their stories of having experienced racial prejudice in Florida during and after the Civil Rights Movement. Patricia grew up in a world which became increasingly hostile to her and other black people in the south. Under Jim Crow, she and others were forced to depend upon one another in the black community to unite against and question local police and potentially aggressive white strangers. Attempting to spare her daughter a similar childhood, Patricia and her husband later raise Tananarive in a primarily white suburb, unwittingly creating complications in Tananarive's cultural identity.
In 1942 Patricia joined her fellow Florida A&M students in the sit-in at Woolworth's in Tallahassee. She recalls seeing a white man with a gun who showed no signs of disposing of the weapon -- her first moment of true panic in which she learned that the majority was not on her side. She continues to actively participate in the Congress of Racial Equity's (CORE) activities in Florida. At one point she organizes a series of protests against segregated lunches in Miami. Even at home Patricia devoted her time to reconciling racial prejudices, nearly marrying a white man. Eventually, however, she marries a civil rights lawyer named John Due. Together they build a suburban life for their daughter and avoid placing her in compromising positions in her social life.
Tananarive remembers feeling compromised in her youth. She felt simultaneously rejected by her black peers and different from her white peers. Although her parents raised her to appreciate the immense social struggle of the Civil Rights Movement, she realizes that not all that much as changed about racist social opinions since the days when her parents were politically active. In high school she fulfills a leadership role in the NAACP's youth program. At Northwestern University, she joins the For Members Only black student political activist program, but she feels once more displaced. The majority of her friends are white and far removed from any need to become politically active. Based upon her parents sacrifice in their youth, however, she continues to invest her time and attention in FMO and other organizations in order to accomplish social change and to cotninue the legacy of civil rights in practical ways.
