In a racially mixed American town, a five-year-old black girl falls unnoticed into a hidden, forgotten well on her way to school. Having nothing better to go on, the police follow up a report that the child was seen with a white stranger, and rumors run wild. Before hapless, innocent Claude Packard is even found, popular hysteria has him tried and convicted. But is he guilty?

Rural Mississippi in the 1940s: Lucas Beauchamp, a local black man with a reputation of not kowtowing to whites, is found standing over the body of a dead white man, holding a pistol that has recently been fired. Quickly arrested for murder and jailed, Beauchamp insists he's innocent and asks the town's most prominent lawyer, Gavin Stevens, to defend him, but Stevens refuses. When a local boy whom Beauchamp has helped in the past and who believes him to be innocent hears talk of a mob taking Beauchamp out of jail and lynching him, he pleads with Stevens to defend Beauchamp at trial and prove his innocence.

With the election approaching, a judge in a Southern town at the turn of the 20th century is involved variously in revealing the real identity of a young woman, reliving his Civil War memories, and preventing the lynching of an African youth.

Ellen Burton arrives in Africa to join Dr. Mary as her nurse, bringing modern medicine to the native peoples. Lonni Douglas, an animal wrangler and fortune hunter, agrees to take her upriver, despite his misgivings about her suitability for Africa. They battle escaped gorillas, hostile natives, infected lion wounds, and hostile witch doctors to reach their destination and on the way, they fall in love. Will their contrasting interests doom their romance?

Writer Harry Street reflects on his life as he lies dying from an infection while on safari in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro.

A Martinique charter boat skipper gets mixed up with the underground French resistance operatives during WWII.

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

Two tobacco growers battle for control of the cigarette market.

Ex-gunfighter Ned Britt returns to Fort Worth after the civil war to help run a newspaper which is against ambitious men and their schemes for control.

Army Captain Edward Hall returns to the U.S. after two years in a prison camp in the Korean War. In the camp, he was brainwashed and helped the Chinese convince the other prisoners that they were fighting an unjust war. When he comes back he is charged for collaboration with the enemy. Where does loyalty end in a prison camp, when the camp is a living hell?