Lincoln Agrippa Daily, known to his drifter cohorts on the 1920s Marseille waterfront as Banjo, passes his days panhandling and dreaming of starting his own little band. At night Banjo and his buddies prowl the rough waterfront bistros, drinking, looking for women, playing music, fighting, loving, and talking - about their homes in Senegal, the West Indies, or the American South; about Garvey's Back-to-Africa Movement; about being black. When Ray, a writer, joins the group, it triggers Banjo's rediscovery of his African roots and his feeling that, at last, he belongs to a race weighted, tested and poised in the universal scheme.