Against the backdrop of the civil rights movement, White Gloves and Collards is the story of a privileged childhood in Edenton, North Carolina, a small southern town that cherishes its history and customs as symbolized by the Confederate monument at the foot of Broad Street. As young Helen deals with the untimely deaths of both parents to cancer, she observes how her community is coping with a different kind of the loss--an end to the Jim Crow rules of behavior they've always lived by.