At the Atlanta station we waited for the whites to get off. One of them, a large middle-aged man, hesitated, turned and stepped back toward us. We hardened ourselves for another insult. He bent over to speak to the young Negro. “I just wanted to tell you that before he slapped you, he’d have had to slap me down first,” he said. None of us smiled. We wondered why he had not spoken up while the whites were still on the bus.
