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Malcolm Maguire is a senior at all-white Clinton High, and he gets an unusual surprise on the first day after Christmas break. A Negro shows up in his homeroom, and he is as out of place as a brown beer mug in a collection of china tea cups.Malcolm and his girlfriend, Carrie Crawford, believe in racial equality, and they accept Lionel hoping they can set an example that others will follow. It's not long before Malcolm and Carrie are getting anonymous hate notes. Racial equality is an idyllic dream. The reality is that the races are separated by an unyielding wall.Both Malcolm and Lionel are talented painters. Malcolm's greatest dream is to win the distinguished High School Art Competition, and Lionel has also entered.One afternoon when the Art room is unoccupied, vandals destroy Lionel's painting and deface Malcolm's, and it ruins his hopes of winning the Art Competition. Angered because he is being punished for being too friendly with Lionel, he backs away from the friendship.Malcolm's painting is restored, and in a more rational frame of mind, he sees that Lionel is not to blame. He has a strong chance of winning the blue ribbon, and he renews his friendship with Lionel.Then the Clinton neighborhood goes crazy when a white girl says she has been assaulted by a black man. Lionel shows up at school dressed as a Negro field hand, in overalls and a straw hat, and with a rope around his neck, forced to dress like this by vicious racists. And this is only the beginning. they trash the Lemmons' apartment and kill Lionel's dog. Malcolm and Carrie take Lionel and his mother to safety in the black neighborhood. Malcolm and Lionel part under the worst of circumstances. Lionel is angry and bitter, and Malcolm knows that they will probably never see each other again.Malcolm is shattered when Lionel wins the Art Competition. (He entered a painting he did at home). A Negro beat him out for first prize and after all Malcolm as done for him? It is the mother of all sucker-punches.To further complicate things, Lionel is disqualified on a technicality, and Malcolm's painting takes first prize. Now Malcolm spends some serious time soul-searching. Why can't a Negro paint a prize-winning painting? What good is first place if it comes at the expense of somebody else? Who does the money really belong to? And the more he thinks about these things, the more he knows what he must do.
