The Watsons Go to Birmingham tells the story of the Watsons, a lower middle class African-American family living in Flint, Michigan in the early 1960s from the perspective of Kenny Watson, the middle child of three. 

The first part of the novel focuses on Kenny's struggles to make friends as a smart and thoughtful ten-year-old, then shifts in setting when his parents decide to deliver their oldest son, Byron, to live with his grandmother in Birmingham, Alabama. 

The family embarks on a road trip to the Deep South, and while visiting Alabama, they get caught up in a tragic historical event of the Civil Rights Movement. 

Bud Caldwell, the main character, travels from Flint to Grand Rapids, giving readers a glimpse of the midwestern state in the late 1930s; he meets a homeless family and a labor organizer and experiences life as an orphaned youth and the racism of the time, such as laws that prohibited African Americans from owning land in many areas, the dangers facing black people, and racial segregation.