In 1955, when the threat of polio sends the neighborhood kids out of the August heat to nap in the afternoons, meeting on the Henry family's front stoop in the evenings becomes the highlight of their day. Five of them - Kate, Charlie, Will, Sonny, and Bucky - send each other off on different dares, beginning at the abandoned Civil War manor sitting at the entrance to their neighborhood. Stepping past crumbling headstones in the manor's eerie gated cemetery, they see a cabin with a light shining through its window. When they see a tall, muscular Negro sitting at a kitchen table, a book and a beer in front of him, they decide to make him the target of their games, naming him "Tramp" because to them, what else could he be? One night, one of them doesn't make it back to the group. A racist police lieutenant and an overzealous night watchman search for the missing child, all along suspecting Tramp. The younger sister of one of the five, defying the racial segregation of the day, befriends a young black girl living in a former servant bungalow across from the manor. Inspired by the words of Rosa Parks - "You must never be fearful about what you are doing when it is right" - the two join forces and solve the mystery of the missing child.