Claude just wants a place where he can fit. As a young black man born on the South Side of Chicago, he is raised by his civil rights - era grandmother, who tries to shape him into a principled actor for change; yet when riots consume his neighbourhood, he hesitates to take sides, unwilling to let race define his life. He decides to escape Chicago for another place, to go to college, to find a new identity, to leave the pressure cooker of his hometown behind. But as he discovers, he cannot; there is no safe haven for a young black man in this time and place called America.