In 1916, a Chicago steel worker accidentally kills his supervisor and flees to the Texas panhandle with his girlfriend and little sister to work harvesting wheat in the fields of a stoic farmer.

Duke Jarrett is sent to jail at the John Dillinger prison. However, the prison looks more like a zoo, more or less ruled by the prisoners themselves.

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.