Content Warning: This section refers to enslavement, racism, racist violence, discrimination, offensive terms for Black people, murder and death, suicide, and alcohol addiction. The n-word is quoted and obscured.

The Garies and Their Friends opens with Mr. and Mrs. Garie eating lunch at their home in Savannah, Georgia, with their two small children, a boy and a girl. They are listening to their visitor, Mr. Winston, tell them about his travels. Although Mr. Winston is Black, he had been assumed to be white and spent time with the daughter of Mr. Priestly, who is a virulent racist. Mr. Winston then describes a dinner he attended at the Mortons’ home in Philadelphia where a Black waiter had corrected the Belgian minister about the mention of salad in Chaucer. Mr. Garie finds these stories very funny. When Mrs. Garie takes the children to bed, Mr. Garie remarks to Mr. Winston that she has seemed sad lately. It is then revealed that Mr. Winston is a freed, formerly enslaved man. His travels in the North have shown him how segregated it still is, and so he is considering leaving the United States altogether.