Art student Perry (Anthony Mackie) befriends an elderly homeless man named Richard Bruce Nugent (Roger Robinson (actor)), who turns out to have been an important figure in the Harlem Renaissance. Through recalling his friendships with other important Harlem Renaissance figures Langston Hughes (Daniel Sunjata), Aaron Douglas (Leith M. Burke), Wallace Thurman (Ray Ford) and Zora Neale Hurston (Aunjanue Ellis). Bruce chronicles some of the challenges he faced as a young, black, gay writer in the 1920s. Perry discovers that the challenges of homophobia and racism he faces in the early 21st century closely parallel Bruce's.