In 1965 a Soviet emissary was sent to Memphis, Tennessee, to create social anarchy by exploiting the civil rights movement and fund the war in Southeast Asia through the sale of drugs. During a civil rights march from Memphis to Jackson, Mississippi, the communist agent meets Trifecta Johnson, a black teenager who is chosen to be one of the students to integrate the oldest white high school in Memphis. Trifecta lives in one of the citys roughest housing projects with his grandmother and two antagonistic cousins. All three boys have been abandoned by their mothers. The South Memphis ghetto is controlled by a street thug called The Mayor, who sells drugs at the corner of Mississippi Boulevard and Walker Avenue. With racial tensions mounting due to the integration of the citys high schools, a retired newspaper reporter challenges Henry Murphy, a less-than-stellar white student at Central High School, to write socially significant articles for the school newspaper. Henry, impassioned by his mentors encouragement, writes so honestly about the chaotic world around him that his work, especially what doesnt get published, causes him to lose his girlfriend, get suspended from school, become a person of interest to the FBI, fight with Trifecta, and befriend the only hippie girl at his conservative school. For Henry and Trifecta, the irrepressible social pressures to survive integration during the racially volatile garbage strike that will forever change the face of the city and the civil rights movement bring them together, move them to sacrifice, and ultimately force them from their adolescent oblivion.