Click for larger images

At the Hezekiah Baptist Church, prayers are offered for Brutus Jones, who is about to leave town for a job as a Pullman porter.  Before boarding his train, Jones bids farewell to his sweetheart, Dolly, who fears for his well being.  Her concerns prove valid when Jones's buddy, Jeff, initiates him to the very lifestyle she feared.  In Harlem, Jones takes Jeff's girlfriend Undine as his mistress.

Later, when Jones is transferred to the car of the President of the United States, he overhears illicit monetary dealings and then blackmails a financier into investing his savings of $300.  The now fashionable Jones, resolving to "travel light," drops Undine in favor of Belle La Due.  When Undine attacks Belle at a nightclub, Jones leaves both women behind and encounters Jeff gambling in a pool hall.  There the two men gamble in a high-stakes crap game.  When Jones discovers that Jeff is using loaded dice, he starts a fight and accidentally kills Jeff.  Jones is sent to prison for the murder, but escapes after refusing to obey a guard's brutal order to beat a tortured fellow prisoner.

He returns to Dolly and, after filing through his chains, discards his prison uniform and obtains work as a ship's stoker on a vessel bound for Kingston, Jamaica.  On the way, Jones jumps ship and is taken prisoner by a dictator, General Peters, and sold for five dollars to Smithers, a crooked white trader and gunrunner.  After gambling with the other prisoners, Jones obtains their money and, by threatening to become a competitor, bluffs Smithers into making him a partner.  When the general and his treasurer complain about receiving a dishonest bill from Smithers and Jones, the general orders Jones's execution.  Jones, however, foils the execution by replacing the drunken aide Quacko's bullets with blanks.

Awed by Jones's apparently miraculous escape from death, and believing his claim that he can only be killed by silver bullets, the general's troops accept Jones as their new ruler.  Proclaiming himself the Emperor Jones, over the next two and a half years he doubles taxes, elaborately furnishes his palace and buys ornate uniforms for his men.  Jones continues to loot the country, sending money away so that he can leave a wealthy man, until the people realize his scheme and revolt.

One day, when Jones orders floggings and the burning of a village for the attack on a tax collector, Jones's troops abandon him.  The next evening, Jones, believing that he can find his way to the forest and escape on a French ship, becomes lost in the swamps and forest and is frightened by the sound of beating drums.  After seeing and hearing scenes from his past, Jones prays for forgiveness.  The sight of a voodoo figure sends Jones in a hysterical rush to the camp, where his former guards shoot him with a silver bullet.