A Black writer in the 1930s sets out for Durham working on a project about the folklore of ex-slaves. During his work, he comes across the Night Doctors who will take everything he has for him to go free.

A Black, southern house servant with internalized racism, joins her mistress on a visit to another region, where she observes Black people acting with something she abhors: autonomy.

The racism a Black, working-class couple faces at work during the Harlem Renaissance spills over into their relationship in violent ways.

In a segregated America at the onset of World War II, strange, explosive “stumps”—formed out of spores and resembling wooden statues of the recently deceased—have begun to appear all over cities. To neutralize and remove these stumps, a new government agency has employed a group of singers whose unique vocal resonance can turn the stumps to dust. But when the only two Black female “exterminators” in Chicago—a God-fearing goody two-shoes and a brash blues singer—uncover the agency's corrupt secrets, they decide to stage a rebellion.

An insufferable white man offers advice to a well-read, unemployed Black man holding a sandwich-board sign on a street corner on race relations, physical appearance, and how to improve his handwriting and thereby advance himself in society.

In 2018, a pedestrian on the New York City’s Lower East Side witnesses a young Black couple in love, prompting a consideration about the storytelling, hope, and Nelson Mandela.

In Iowa, a young Black man goes to a party where he meets a host of artist types who cause him to reflect on how people relate to each other.

A young white girl takes on responsibility for repaying Black people in America back for their suffering under slavery after hearing a gospel choir sing.

As he reflects on a murder perpetrated by his father, a college professor considers the history of his family and how race and violence intersect.

On an island off the coast of South Carolina, two men quickly find themselves plagued by a mysterious spirit after one of them steals a flask from an African American man’s grave.