Black Like Me Read Online Free PDF Page A

many of them for us. Best thing’s just to stick close to home. Otherwise sometimes you’ll find you’ve got to walk halfway across town to find a place.”
    When I left him I caught the bus into town, choosing a seat halfway to the rear. As we neared Canal, the car began to fill with whites. Unless they could find a place themselves or beside another white, they stood in the aisle.
    A middle-aged woman with stringy gray hair stood near my seat. She wore a clean but faded print house dress that was hoisted to one side as she clung to an overhead pendant support. Her face looked tired and I felt uncomfortable. As she staggered with the bus’s movement my lack of gallantry tormented me. I half rose from my seat to give it to her, but Negroes behind me frowned disapproval. I realized I was “going against the race” and the subtle tug-of-war became instantly clear. If the whites would not sit with us, let them stand. When they became tired enough or uncomfortable enough, they would eventually take seats beside us and soon see that it was not so poisonous after all. But to give them your seat was to let them win. I slumped back under the intensity of their stares.
    But my movement had attracted the white woman’s attention. For an instant our eyes met. I felt sympathy for her, and thought I detected sympathy in her glance. The exchange blurred the barriers of race (so new to me) long enough for me to smile and vaguely indicate the empty seat beside me, letting her know she was welcome to accept it.
    Her blue eyes, so pale before, sharpened and she spat out, “What you looking at me like
that
for?”
    I felt myself flush. Other white passengers craned to look at me. The silent onrush of hostility frightened me.
    “I’m sorry,” I said, staring at my knees. “I’m not from here.”The pattern of her skirt turned abruptly as she faced the front.
    “They’re getting sassier every day,” she said loudly. Another woman agreed and the two fell into conversation.
    My flesh prickled with shame, for I knew the Negroes rightly resented me for attracting such unfavorable attention. I sat the way I had seen them do, sphinx-like, pretending unawareness. Gradually people lost interest. Hostility drained to boredom. The poor woman chattered on, reluctant apparently to lose the spotlight.
    I learned a strange thing - that in a jumble of unintelligible talk, the word “nigger” leaps out with electric clarity. Yo u always hear it and always it stings. And always it casts the person using it into a category of brute ignorance. I thought with some amusement that if these two women only knew what they were revealing about themselves to every Negro on that bus, they would have been outraged.
    I left the bus on Canal Street. Other Negroes aboard eyed me not with anger, as I had expected, but rather with astonishment that any black man could be so stupid.
    For an hour, I roamed aimlessly through the streets at the edge of the French Quarter. Always crowds and always the sun. On Derbigny Street I had coffee in a small Negro café called the Two Sisters Restaurant. A large poster on the wall caught my attention:
DESEGREGATE THE BUSES WITH THIS 7 POINT PROGRAM:
Pray for guidance.
Be courteous and friendly.
Be neat and clean.
Avoid loud talk.
Do not argue.
Report incidents immediately.
Overcome evil with good.
    Sponsored by

Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance

Rev. A.L. Davis, President
Rev. J.E. Poindexter, Secretary
    I walked to the same shoeshine stand in the French Quarter that I had been visiting as a white man. My friend Sterling Williams sat on an empty box on the sidewalk. He looked up without a hint of recognition.
    “Shine?”
    “I believe so,” I said and climbed up on the stand.
    He hoisted his heavy body on his crutch and hobbled over to begin the work. I wore shoes of an unusual cut. He had shined them many times and I felt he should certainly recognize them.
    “Well, it’s another fine day,” he said.
    “Sure