The main characters introduce themselves. The style of music changes as each represented ethnic group--upper class Protestant, African-American, and Eastern European Jewish immigrant--is introduced. From the Protestant group there is Edgar, a young boy and only child of Mother and Father; Father, a well-to-do businessman and explorer; Mother, his homemaking wife; Mother's Younger Brother, a "young man in search of something to believe in"; and Grandfather, a crotchety old man. Those who live in their rich, white neighborhood say that their life is pleasant, placid, and extremely sheltered, with "no negroes" and "no immigrants". From the African-American group there is Coalhouse Walker Jr, a professional piano player and a Ragtime pioneer; Sarah, his ardent admirer; and Booker T. Washington, a historical figure known for trying to soothe race relations. Among the immigrants are Tateh, a Latvian widower who has come to America to give his daughter a new life; Harry Houdini, another historical personage as an escape artist and a role model for downtrodden immigrants, as he was an immigrant himself, who is warned by Edgar to "warn the Duke". The focus shifts to more historical figures: Henry Ford, creator of the Model T and the assembly line; JP Morgan, the richest man of his time; Emma Goldman, a radical anarchist and fanatic opponent of American capitalism; and Evelyn Nesbit, a vaudeville actress whose former lover, architect Stanford White, was murdered by her husband, Harry Kendall Thaw. Ragtime tickets will hit home, this story about real life people and incidences that occurred in the past has a special way of reeling the audience in.
