Plot

A successful African American businessman has a quarrel with a white policeman, suspecting that he is having an affair with his wife. The policeman's colleagues are seeking to avoid publicity.

A gloomy vision of the possibility of decent relations between whites and blacks anywhere, including the South. Undertaker L.B. Jones, the richest black man in his county of Tennessee, is divorcing his wife for infidelity with a white policeman. Taking a stand against racism, he is greeted with a hostile bunch of Southern bigots and other various stereotypes. Written by Stirling Silliphant (In the Heat of the Night (1967)). Director William Wyler's final film.—alfiehitchie

L.B. Jones is a well-to-do African-American funeral director who comes to Oman Hedgepath's firm in search of legal representation. Jones wishes to divorce his young wife Emma, but his grounds make the case hot news. Jones has learned Emma has been having an affair with Willie Joe Worth, a white police officer who is the father of Emma's unborn child. Hedgepath, fearing that the revelations of a public divorce trial will rock the race conscious town. He has a private conversation with Worth, hoping to settle the matter quietly out of court. In doing so, Hedgepath ignites a course of events more devastating than any divorce trial could have produced. Worth does not want his affair dragged into a court of law, so he and his fellow officer Stanley Bumpas violently take matters into their own hands.—Annomous

In the largely segregated town of Somerton, TN, Oman Hedgepath, the city attorney who also has his own private practice, has just accepted the case of the town's well-off and well-respected black undertaker Lord Byron Jones - L.B. in familiar circumstances - who is filing for divorce from his much younger wife, Emma Jones, due to her infidelity. While L.B. and Emma came to the understanding that she would not contest the divorce in refusing to end the affair, she decided otherwise in wanting to have her cake and eat it too. The issue is that the person with who she is having the affair is Willie Joe Worth, a white police officer. While Emma and Willie Joe's affair is acceptable behind closed doors, even if everyone in town knows what's going on, it would cause a scandal if that affair is put on the public record in the contested divorce proceedings. Oman's predilection with this situation, as is the way of the south, is to handle whatever problem as quietly as possible, which in this case entails having a chat with Willie Joe to convince Emma not to contest the divorce. What happens is affected by Oman's new law partner, newly minted lawyer Steve Mundine, his idealistic nephew from the north, he who got into the profession in admiring his uncle, and by the quiet arrival back into town of black Sonny Boy Mosby, whose return solely was in a plan to kill Willie Joe's patrol partner, Stanley Bumpas, who beat Sonny Boy almost to death when he was thirteen.—Huggo

Steve and Nella Mundine arrive in Somerton, Tennessee, where Steve is to join the law firm of uncle Oman Hedgepath. Arriving on the same train is Sonny Boy Mosby, a young black man bent on avenging a childhood beating inflicted by white policeman Stanley Bumpas. Hedgepath is persuaded by Steve to accept the divorce suit of Lord Byron Jones, a wealthy black undertaker. Although Jones has named white policeman Willie Joe Worth as corespondent, his wife Emma contest the suit, hoping to receive a settlement sufficent to meet the needs of the child she has pregnant by Worth. Jones wants an uncontested divorce, but Emma won't give it to him; nor will she give up her lover. She likes playing a mistress. Hedgepath would rather not practice what he calls "nigger law", especially since contested divorce involving a white co-respondent would cause an uproar. When he informs the officer of the suit, he is alarmed; he pressures Worth to "fix things"; drop his affair with Jones's wife and get her to agree to an uncontested divorce, otherwise he will face exposure in court. Fearful of scandal, Worth demands that Emma forego the contest and beats her when she refuses. After fruitlessly requesting Jones to drop the suit. Although Jones escapes, he is pursued into a junkyard. Tired of flight, Jones confronts the officers and is prompltly shot and castrated. Notwithstanding Worth confession Hedgepath and the town mayor that he murder Jones and begging them to send him to jail, but Hedgepath and the mayor decline and tell him to take the day off. Sonny Boy Mosby, however, unknowingly avenges Jones's murder by pushing Bumpas into a harvester. Steve discover the southern town racism and corruption, he and Nella leave town, departing on the same train as Sonny Boy Mosby, while the black community attends Lord Byron Jones funeral.