The Lesser People

On a snowy Detroit night Elijah Irons, now an old man, tells a black nurse a haunting story from the darkest summer of his childhood in Forksville, Mississippi. He shares his experience with the rising racial tensions in their community and the discord within their own home since Eli, like his father Hank, think of Negroes as ordinary people, while the rest of their community think of them as The Lesser People.

He shares how his father arrests Uncle Tommy for stealing Army rifles and selling...