King navigated Crozer, in part, by managing what W. E. B. Du Bois called “double-consciousness,” or an ability to look at oneself through the eyes of another. King said he hesitated to eat watermelon because he didn’t wish to feed white stereotypes. White people who knew him at Crozer would sometimes recall him as humorless and soft-spoken, but that was because King chose not to reveal himself, as he explained: I was well aware of the typical white stereotype of the Negro—that he is always late, that he’s loud and always laughing, that he’s dirty and messy—and for a while I was terribly
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