The ordinary interactions and everyday routines of the Watsons, an African American family living in Flint, Michigan, are drastically changed after they go to visit Grandma in Alabama in the summer of 1963.

Although a classmate says that she cannot play Peter Pan in the school play because she is a girl and black, Grace discovers that she can do anything she sets her mind to do.

Addy and her mother forgo their Christmas plans to help the newly freed slaves arriving in Philadelphia during the Civil War.

A black family living in the South during the 1930's are faced with prejudice and discrimination which their children don't understand. Warmth, humor and hard times prevail as a black family struggles to maintain dignity and independence in Depression-era Mississippi.