Two hoodlum brothers are brought into a hospital for gunshot wounds, and when one of them dies the other accuses their black doctor of murder.

Pinky, a light skinned black woman, returns to her grandmother's house in the South after graduating from a Northern nursing school. Pinky tells her grandmother that she has been "passing" for white while at school in the North. In addition, she has fallen in love with a young white doctor, who knows nothing about her black heritage.

Two vaudeville performers fall in love, but find their relationship tested by the arrival of WWI.