Centers around the improbable relationship between Ann Atwater, an outspoken civil rights activist, and C.P. Ellis, a regional Ku Klux Klan leader that reluctantly co-chaired a community convention, battling across the desegregation of schools at Durham, North Carolina during the racially-charged summer of 1971. The events that ravaged would shift the lives of Ellis and Atwater as well as Durham for ever.