Plot
Patricia "Pinky" Johnson (Jeanne Crain) returns to the South to Dicey (Ethel Waters), the illiterate black laundress grandmother who raised her. Pinky confesses to Dicey that she passed for white while studying to be a nurse in the North. She had also fallen in love with white Dr. Thomas Adams (William Lundigan), who knows nothing about her black heritage.
Pinky is harassed by racist local law enforcement while attempting to reclaim money owed to her grandmother. Later two white men try to sexually assault her. Dr. Canady (Kenny Washington), a black physician from Leesburg, asks Pinky to train black students who want to become nurses, but Pinky tells him she plans to leave her hometown to return north.
Dicey asks her to stay temporarily to care for her ailing and elderly white friend and neighbor, Miss Em (Ethel Barrymore). Pinky has always disliked Miss Em and lumps her in with the other bigots in the area. Pinky relents and agrees to care for Miss Em after learning that she personally cared for Dicey when she had pneumonia. Pinky nurses the strong-willed Miss Em but does not hide her resentment. As they spend time together, they grow to respect and like each other.
Miss Em bequeaths Pinky her stately house and property when she dies, but on her death, greedy relatives of the deceased woman challenge her will. Everyone advises Pinky that she has no chance of winning, but something she herself does not fully comprehend makes her go on. Pinky begs an old friend of Miss Em's to represent her as her attorney. Pinky washes clothes by hand when her grandmother is unable to in order to pay the court fees. At the trial, crowded with biased white spectators, the judge unexpectedly rules in Pinky's favor.
Tom, who has tracked Pinky down, wants her to sell the inherited property, resume her masquerade as a white woman, marry him and leave the south, but she refuses, believing that Miss Em intended her to use the house and property for some purpose. In the end, Pinky establishes "Miss Em's Clinic and Nursery School".
Read more about this topic: Pinky (film)
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