Act 1, Part 2 Summary

Scene 5. Lt. Edwards answers questions from the Press, a Cub Reporter, and a young woman named Alice Bloomfield, whose questions hinting at the prejudice faced by the Chicano community get no answers. Instead, Edwards indicates that at one point he did have a kind of respect for Henry, but also suggests that the time has come to be extremely tough with the Chicano gangs.

Scene 6. Henry and his gang read the newspaper stories in prison. The others - Joey and Smiley, who are Chicano, and Tommy, who's white but integrated into the gang -restlessly tease each other into sparring matches. Henry tells them to calm down.

George Shearer enters and introduces himself as the lawyer hired by the boys' parents to represent them. When the boys challenge him on how much he's getting paid and whether he's a real lawyer, he...