It depicts the life of Newt Winger, a teenager growing up in Cherokee Flats, Kansas, in the 1920s and chronicles his journey into manhood marked with tragic events.

While Marcus is in jail, Newt begins to work for Jake to make up for his actions and those of his friends and begins a relationship with Arcella Jefferson, a new girl in town, but his relationship with her is destroyed when Chauncey Cavanaugh, a white boy and son of the local judge, impregnates Arcella (implied to be through rape), who ultimately moves away out of shame.

(The judge later apologizes to Newt and his family and says things will be taken care of) After Marcus leaves jail, he works as a janitor at a brothel.

Newt initially keeps quiet about what he has seen, but is bothered that Silas Newhall, a white man and disgruntled employee of Jake, who was at the scene of the crime for another reason, is being accused of a murder he did not commit.

Encouraged by his mother Sarah (who dies from the stress of all the goings-on), Newt reveals to Judge Cavanaugh that Booker committed the murder, and he testifies in court.

Parks also wrote the screenplay, and as a result, the script for the film did not deviate much from the book, except for featuring fewer characters for the sake of running time.

[2] Parks personally chose Kyle Johnson to play the character of Newt after a brief meeting with him in a Beverly Hills hotel.

[4] The current title appears to be taken from a line in the film, one that Sarah Winger tells her son Newt: "Let Cherokee Flats be your learning tree."

All of those years of prejudice and bigotry were broken down in 15 minutes.The Learning Tree was shot on location in Fort Scott, Kansas, in the fall of 1968, and the production process was scheduled to take three months.

The Learning Tree juxtaposes the lives of Newt Winger and Marcus Savage, two former friends that are trying to find themselves in a white-dominated Midwestern society.

When adversity occurs, he tries to act with dignity: when he and his friends steal from Jake Kiner, he attempts to make amends by working for him pro bono; when Chauncey Cavanaugh takes a liking to Newt's girlfriend Arcella, he does his best to protect her and ultimately he comes to term with his loss without showing aggression; he tells the truth in the Kiner murder trial despite that it exposes Booker Savage as the killer and shows some African Americans in an unfavorable light.

In the case of Marcus, he begins to embody violence, specifically when he beats Kiner and attempts to murder Newt for sending both him and his father to jail.

[11] Parks' and Guffey's strong attention to detail helped to make this film beloved and well-remembered to the American public.