Description 14-year-old Mason Steel takes pride in turning his father's excited ramblings about the latest civil rights incidents into handwritten business letters. One day Pa comes home with a gift from his civil rights group: a typewriter. Mason spends all his free time teaching himself to type. When a civil rights group wins a school desegregation case, Mason learns that now he will be attending a formerly all-white high school. Despite the injustice he faces, Mason takes a stand, enters a typing tournament and uses his skills to triumph over suspicions and racial prejudice.