The Bus Ride

 During the summer of 1966, I was 11 years old. Once a week my mom would drop a friend and I off on Congress Avenue, right in front of the Capital Building. We would spend all day walking, or riding the bus up and down the Avenue. We would usually go into Woolsworth, look at the make-up, then go to the soda fountain and have a chocolate malt. We would go see a movie, and go into the stores one by one, just enjoying the day. Mom would then pick us up after she got off work, at the same spot she had dropped us in the morning.



Congress Ave. 1966

 Well, one sunny day when I was downtown with a friend we wanted to take the bus all the way to Town Lake, so we got on the bus, sat down and settled in for the ride. At a bus stop about half way down Congress Avenue, an elderly black woman got on, carrying a bag of groceries. She was wearing a pretty navy blue dress with tiny white flowers on it. She had stockings on, which didn't match her skin tone, and  shoes which were made for working in. She also had a cute little hat on too. I watched as she walked to the back of the bus, but there was no place for her to sit down. Since my friend and I were sitting towards the second door of the bus, I got up and told her she could sit in my seat. She sat down, thanked me, and the bus doors closed.

Just about the time I expected the bus to start going, I felt the brakes being applied very abruptly. Then a booming voice came from the driver, "Miss, you cannot sit there." I, in my innocence, looked around me, and didn't see any problem. Again, the driver spoke sternly, "There can be no coloreds sitting in the white section of the bus." Then I realized he was talking to the elderly woman I had given my seat to. I spoke up then, "There are no seats left in the back section for her to sit in, so I gave her my seat. She can sit there."

At this point the driver got up, and came back to where we were, and was going to physically make the elderly woman get up and stand in the 'colored' section of the bus. I stepped in his way, "My parents have taught me to respect my elders, and this woman is my elder, and she needs to sit down." The driver said, "Little girl, this bus line does not allow coloreds to sit in the white section of the bus. She has to move."

I said, "She is a human being just like you, sir, I mean no disrespect, but if you were to take your skin off and she were to take her skin off, you would both be blood red."



This woman reminds me of the woman I encountered.



At that, the driver said, "You three off the bus NOW." So, the elderly lady, my friend, and myself all three stepped off the bus and stood motionless and wordless as the bus drove away without us. I apologized to the black woman, and she said these words, which  I will never forget, "Chile, I ain't never seen anything like that. Where did you ever learn to not be afraid of the while man." I said that my daddy was a white man and I was never afraid of him. I told her that my daddy had taught me that there really is no difference in a human beings color, we were all the same, body, soul, and mind that God gave us all. She hugged me and my friend. She started to walk away, and I took hold of her shoping bag, and told her that we would walk with her to where she needed to go. She said that we could go just over two blocks and she could catch a bus over there that would take her home, and it wouldn't have the same bus driver on it.



My last memory of her was her hand waving to us through the window as the bus drove off, her sitting in the colored section. I told my friend it was a stupid and crazy world we were growing up in.

And it was. And remains so.

I still do not see color.