A man who acts upon his conscience opens a Pandora’s box of racism and intolerance. Temple Rayburn (James Woods) is an attorney who lives and works in a small Southern community in the 1940s. When Rayburn and his wife Celia (Elizabeth McGovern) encounter a young man named Ben Tyler (Charles Mattocks)—a mentally-challenged African-American youth with nowhere to go—they take pity on him and let him stay in their home. However, in a time and place when black and white citizens were not allowed to use the same drinking fountain, Temple’s decision raises more than a few eyebrows, and the Rayburn household soon becomes the center of a local political firestorm.