The World Is Full of Champions spans more than thirty years from the ’60s to the late ’90s in race-torn Philadelphia as two proud Black families—one wealthy, the other not—confront major change when tragedy strikes and the daughter of the working-class Smythe family falls in love with the son of the affluent Whitman family. Georgia Smythe and her mother live on the rough side of town. As a young girl, she loses her father in a tragic mining accident, but overcomes her loss to become a thoughtful and attractive young woman. She falls in love with Lawrence, the handsome son of the Whitman family for whom her mother works as a maid. The Whitmans, recovering from the death of Lawrence’s brother in a hit-and-run car accident, have other ideas about whom their remaining son should marry and are concerned about how such a liaison will affect their social position. How will the two families deal with Georgia and Lawrence’s relationship and the unintended divulging of a closely guarded secret?