Chapter 5 of the book Bad Boy, Myers shares historical events of the time. In the summer of 1947 two black players had finally been accepted into the major league baseball, the president was negotiating with black leaders to integrate the armed forces, and a local newspaper had suggested that the United States were going to start treating blacks as equals. Myers also talks about discipline and how at the time spankings were not considered abuse, but intended to define what behavior was unacceptable. And then there was school. In this year Myers met Mrs. Conway as a teacher and the year the school magazine published one of his poems.

In the sixth chapter of Bad Boy, Myers talks about how his friends fell into two camps, those who played