Arthur's sister Ida May (Evelyn Preer) contacts her former boyfriend, the attorney Sidney Wyeth (Lawrence Chenault), to defend Gilpin in court.

During the trial, Wyeth redirects attention for the murder away from Gilpin to Anthony Brisbane, a white man with a history of sexual deviancy.

[1] Oscar Micheaux, the most prolific African-American filmmaker of the race film genre, had previously addressed the issue of violence by whites against blacks in his 1920 feature Within Our Gates, which aroused controversy.

[4] That film's storyline, which included a portrayal of racial lynching and the sexual attack by a white man against a black woman, resulted in censorship rulings in Atlanta and other major cities throughout the U.S.[5] Micheaux tackled another controversial subject with his 1921 The Gunsaulus Mystery.

Micheaux revisited the subject again in 1935 with a sound remake, which was released under the titles Murder in Harlem and Lem Hawkins' Confession.