For fifteen years August Sitwell has worked for the Barclays, a well-to-do white family who plucked him from an orphan asylum and gave him a job. The groundskeeper is part of the household's all black staff, along with "Miss Mamie" the talented cook, pretty new maid Jennie Williams, and three young kitchen apprentices the latest orphan boys Mr. Barclay has taken in to "civilize" boys like August. But the Barclays fortunes have fallen and their money is almost gone. When a prospective business associate proposes selling Miss Mamie's delicious rib sauce to local markets under the brand name "The Rib King" using caricature of a wildly grinning August wearing a jewel encrusted crown on the label Mr. Barclay, desperate for cash agrees yet neither Miss Mamie nor August will see a dime. Humiliated, August grows increasingly distraught, his anger building to a rage that explodes in shocking tragedy.