“Why can’t we be friends?” mumbled Joey. Joey was a small boy with black hair, brown eyes, and kind of ragged clothes. Joey’s friend,Muhammad, heard him mumbling to himself and was wondering why. Muhammad walked over to Joey and asked him what was wrong. Joey told him that he felt sad because his friends parents and his parents wouldn’t let him and his other friend hang out with each other because Joey’s other friend was white and Joey is black. Muhammad thought Joey was right that black kids and white kids should be able to be together. Both of the boys did not like the way the society was run because the black and white people were separated and not allowed to be around each other. When Joey got home his parents were waiting for him because they weren’t to happy, but they also kind of knew how Joey felt because when they were kids they felt the same way. Joey’s house was made of bricks but it was a house to live in even though it might not be as expensive as the house’s the higher class people have. When Joey walked in the door he saw his parents. They told him to go into the living room and sit down so they could talk. Joey could feel his heart pounding in his chest because he didn’t know what they were going to say. When they walked in he could see the stern look on their faces. When they were done talking Joey ate his dinner and then went to bed.

The next day Joey and his friend saw each other and they talked and decided to make a plan to make their parents let them hang out. This plan took a couple of days to put together but they finally finished getting it ready. Their plan was to put up petitions around town to see if other people felt the same way that they did. After a couple weeks they went out and got all the papers and to their surprise many people signed the papers. Next, they brought all the papers to their parents and their parents were very surprised when they saw how many people had signed it. The parents finally decided to let the two kids hang out with each other because many of the other citizens in the town probably wouldn’t care if they did or didn’t. Then the parents of the two children met and discussed what to do with the petition. Then Joey’s parents came up with the idea that they could show it to the mayor of the town.

After a few hours, the long day was over.The next day the parents decided to take the petition to the mayor and at first the mayor said no. He said that the rules had been the same for years and years and that the kids probably wouldn’t get along because they had been in “two different worlds” for so long. The parents showed him the petition again then he decided that they might as well try it and if it didn’t work out they could go back to the way that things were before. He said that they would do this experiment for at least three weeks and then decide from there, so they spread the kids up in different schools so the kids were meshed in together. However, the kids had a lot more in common than the mayor thought the kids would. So in the end Joey and his friend could be together and all the other kids in the town became friends, but there were still a few kids who thought they were better than others. Then all the kids who still thought they were better than others decided to try to get along with the other kids and come to find out they had just made some new friends.