Birthright

After graduating from Harvard, Peter Siner, a black man, travels to the South by train, planning to set up a school for black children in his hometown. At the town of Cairo, he is ordered to leave his Pullman car and get into the "Jim Crow" car for blacks. At the platform of his destination, he meets Tump Pack, a burly, loud-mouthed black man, who is returning home from fighting overseas, after receiving the Distinguished Service badge. When Tump arrives at his home on the Tennessee River, he is given a warm welcome, but during the celebration, the white constable, Dawson Bobbs, arrests him on a four-year-old charge of shooting craps. A few days later, Bobbs raids Peter's village, searching for a stolen turkey roaster, and ransacks the house where Peter and his mother live. When the roaster turns up after Bobbs leaves, Peter is embarrassed. Peter meets and falls in love with Cissie Dildine, but then learns that she is Tump's girl friend. A local lodge raises one hundred dollars for Peter's school, and he purchases land on which to build it. He soon learns, however, that the deed for the land has a clause in it that prohibits blacks from occupying the land. The black townfolk now ridicule Peter and his education, but Cissie stands by him. Tump, released from jail, beats Peter up after seeing him and Cissie together, which further adds to Peter's humiliation in the eyes of the townfolk. Some time later, Tump goes to shoot Peter, but he is apprehended and sent to work on a chain gang. Peter and Cissie now become engaged. Peter's mother dies, and after a strange, elderly white man named Captain Renfrew visits Peter, he goes to live with the man. On the night before their wedding is to take place, Cissie, feeling that Peter is too far above her intellectually, tells him that she is an immoral woman and unfit to marry him. Peter leaves her, and afterwards, Cissie, goaded by ambition, struggles to rise up and be someone, but the townfolks' accusations against her contribute to her downfall. When she goes to visit Peter, Bobbs, tipped off by a black informant known as "The Persimmon," waits outside. He arrests her for grand larceny as she leaves Peter, but it is uncertain whether she is actually guilty, or has been framed because she has refused to give her body to a seducer. [No information has been located concerning the conclusion of this plot.]