John Wallis is a young veteran living in 1870s Virginia. Wallis is intelligent, urbane, sophisticated...and Negro - a rarity in the post Civil War south. Wallis teaches at Hopkins Negro College, the fictional first-rate college for educating black men located in the Shenandoah Valley. Wallis masterfully utilizes his intelligence, wit, and reserved deviousness to satisfy his private ambition to become the most powerful black man in Virginia, with strong connections from the town of Hopkins all the way to the Governor's mansion in Richmond.