George is, a stuck-up white insurance agent who is married to Parsons and fathers two children, Garrett and Moran. The family's life is pretty normal and uneventful in other words typical white suburban family with all the usual suburbia problems.
One morning George wakes up and realizes that due to some crazy phenomenon with his body he has turned into a black man. At first, he thinks he might have slept under his sun lamp for too long, then he frantically tries to wash off the blackness with showers, and milk baths. .
His doctor suggests that George might feel better if he would see a black doctor. His neighbors organize to get George to leave the area. They were afraid that presence of the black person in the neighborhood would drive the prices of homes down and that more black people may move in to neighborhood. .
Georges boss Caine, though first in disbelief, thinks of this phenomenon as a good thing and one of the ways to expand his business into "untapped market". Even his secretary who before he turned black, never thought much of him became interested in him.
Eventually, George starts feeling better about being black. He realized that there is no way that he can hide it nor can he run away from it. Unfortunately his family is not coming to terms about him being black. His children are embarrassed of him and his wife even though she was tolerant and patient at first, no longer wants to be involved in inter-racial marriage. Toward the end of the movie she takes the kids and moves in with her mother to Indiana.
George comes to grips with his blackness so he moves into black neighborhood and opens up his own insurance agency.
Overall this movie paints a good picture of society and the way people deal with race. Even his wife, who at first appeared understanding and stood by her man, was eventually unhappy about her husband being black. His children, who loved their father when he was white, were embarrassed of the fact that he was black.