The curtain rises on "a corner in lower Manhattan," where three streets meet. The street to the left is all
white, that to
the right is all
black. In the spring evening, four whites and four blacks play marbles; among the children are Ella Downey, Shorty, and Mickey, all white, along with Jim Harris and Joe, who are black. As the sun sets, the children realize that they must go home, but Jim and Ella linger. When the others tease them, Jim chases them away. Alone, Jim tells Ella that he has been drinking chalk and water to make himself white, while Ella wishes she were black. Despite their racial difference, they agree that he will be her fellow, she his girl. As the scene ends, she throws a kiss to him.
Nine years pass before the next scene. The childish taunting has turned darker, the racial distinctions more pronounced. The setting is the same, but on this spring night, Jim and Ella are being graduated from high school. Their other friends will not be joining them; Mickey has become a prizefighter, while Shorty and Joe have begun a life of crime. All three resent Jim’s attempt to educate himself. Ella, too, no longer cares for him and spurns his offer of help whenever she needs a friend. His attempt to persuade Mickey to leave Ella alone also fails; only the appearance of the police saves Jim from a beating. Although Jim has been looking forward to graduation, he is devastated by Ella’s treatment, and the curtain falls as he sits immobilized, unable to move on to the high school.
Five years later, Ella and Jim meet again at the same place. Mickey has seduced and abandoned her, and her child by him has died. Shorty offers to add her to his stable of prostitutes, but she refuses. Instead, she accepts Jim’s marriage proposal. In the fourth and final scene of the first act, the wedding occurs despite the obvious hostility of both blacks and whites. To escape this racism, the newlyweds leave for France.
Another two years pass. Although the French do not discriminate against them, Jim and Ella are not happy. When he left America, Jim gave up his chance of becoming a lawyer, a dream to which he clings even though he has never been a good student. Ella cannot shed her ambivalence toward Jim; she admires his kindness and ambition, but she hates his blackness. Embarrassed to be married to a black man, she has imprisoned herself within their French country
house until she has become ill, both mentally and physically. They therefore decide to return to New York to confront their fears. As Jim says, "By being brave we’d free ourselves, and gain confidence, and be really free inside and able then to go anywhere and live in peace and equality with ourselves and the world without any uncomfortable feeling coming up to rile us."
The conditional "we’d" indicates that Jim is not certain that life will improve, and his fears are quickly justified in the first scene of the second act, when Ella encounters Hattie, Jim’s sister. Proud of her heritage, Hattie resents Ella’s condescension toward her. Their confrontation bursts into a furious verbal exchange when Ella says that she will not allow Jim to take the bar examination. Siding with his wife, Jim threatens to leave. Instead, Hattie and her mother go, giving the house to Jim and Ella.
Despite their return to the United States, Ella becomes increasingly sick. Hattie has tried to nurse her, but Ella’s hateful outbursts have driven her away. Ella cannot bear having another white person in the house, and since she hates blacks, Jim remains the only one to care for her. Hattie warns him that he cannot attend to both his wife and his legal studies, but he rejects the warning.
As the play’s final scene reveals, Hattie was right. Jim returns from the post office with a letter announcing that he has again failed to pass the examination. Ella rejoices; she had planned to kill Jim if he had succeeded. She tells Jim that she has feigned madness and kept him awake at night tending to her to prevent his concentrating on his work. His love for her is so strong that he forgives her, and when she asks him to pretend that they are children and play with her, he replies in the last speech of the work, "Honey, Honey, I’ll play right up to the gates of Heaven with you!"