A white attorney, his three children and their black housekeeper are struck by the tremors of changing times and the fledgling civil-rights movement in a small Southern city in the late 1950s. Forrest Bedford hires Lilly Harper to mind his three children 6-year-old John Morgan, 13-year-old tomboy Francie and 16-year-old Nathan, while their mother is hospitalized. The children have a difficult time accepting the non-traditional Lilly into their lives while she struggles to raise her own daughter Adlaine with an absent father. Forrest's Distict Attorney position places him in the middle of many racially charged cases that often pit him against defense attorney Christina LaKatzis, his secret lover.