“Oh, good Lord, why am I doing this? Why did I agree to do this? My parents worked hard to give me the life they never had, and now—I throw it all away.”

​

To take his mind off of things, the young man looked out the window and noticed something: Southern trees look much different than Illinois trees. They, the Southern trees, looked like monsters emerging from the forest like Ents with their huge roots invading the highway. Their long branches and overhanging canopies looked like they’re about to grab the Greyhound bus and drag it deep into the forest, never to come back out. 

​

“The American Congo,” he whispered to himself. He tried to imagine the strange fruit that these trees bore, but the image frightened him. So, he tried to bury it away.

​

He felt like he was being sent off to war. He remembered the instructor at orientation and how he put both palms on the table and leaned in closer to tell them: “Some of you—may not return.”

​

Those three volunteers never made it back. The FBI’s still looking for their mangled corpses.

​

Immediately, he regretted not packing a weapon. After all, local communities are already arming themselves. He heard Stokely Carmichael never went anywhere without an armed escort.

​

His Muslim friends back home urged and begged him to pack at least a .22, but his Christian friends, including his parents, advised him not to. “What message do you think that’ll send if you carry a weapon with you? What if they found it on you?” But the Muslims countered this argument with: “Minister Malcolm says that it’s not violence if it’s in self-defense. If they can go around brandishing shotguns and rifles, saying it’s in self-defense, then we can form our own rifle clubs to defend against terrorism and police brutality. It’s our Second Amendment right!”

​

His Muslim friends and Christian friends always told him not to hang around the other, but he did it anyway. He liked both sides.

​

Right then the bus passed a sign on the side of the road. It was a very unofficial and rudimentary wooden sign that blended with the forest, an extension of the roots. It was white with black paint that said, “KLAN COUNTRY GET OUT.”

​

The image of the first fleet of Greyhound buses three years ago flashed through his head: the hollowed-out exteriors filled with flames and smoke billowing out the windows, mugshots of protestors with police signs around their necks like leashes, the angry mob surrounding the church, and the National Guard descending in. He quickly and violently shook his head to get these images out, but they only slowly faded away and their outlines lingered like ghosts.

​

He remembered the last part of the application he filled out when volunteering: “List any contact who would be helpful in securing your release from jail if you are arrested or who could help with publicity about your activities. List any other persons who could be notified if you are arrested or harassed.”

​

He missed his brownstone in Chicago. He missed his comfortable bed, his desk, his record player, and his vinyl record collection (“For the Times They Are a-Changin’,” “Elvis is Back,” “Please Please Me”). He missed his bookshelf, his school textbooks, his classes, and his 32-page research paper on the Antebellum Civil Rights movements. But most of all he missed his friends and his parents.

​

“You don’t do anything!” he criticized them at dinner.

​

“We donate money,” they argued back. “We’re card-carrying members of the NAACP.”

​

“Yeah, but you don’t do anything! SCLC and SNCC are out there marching in the streets and taking action, while you sit in your stuffy bourgeois clubs, debating. I mean it’s been years since Brown v. Board of Education and nothing’s changed. The rest of the NAACP is going down there to help those people!”

​

They calmed down and took that condescending parental advice tone: “Son, we’re not mad at you, we’re just worried. That’s all. There’s plenty of ways to skin a cat. Follow your father to work at the law office. You can make change that way.”

​

Their advice meant nothing to him; he had already made up his mind on his summer plans, and when he left, his mother cried, his father shook his hand, and both told him, “We’re so proud of you. Don’t forget that.” After they said those two short sentences, he instantly regretted his decision.

​

His parents never liked to talk about their childhoods in the South, so the entire southeastern region of the country seemed imaginary and unreal to him for the longest time. He always knew it was bad there, that’s partly why his parents left, but he couldn’t picture it. It all sounded so fictional and distant, happening in another country to other people. It was just another fact of life that they had to deal with. But then the Greyhounds were deployed, the police busted the sit-ins at Woolworth’s, “Bull” Connor ordered the fire hoses and the German Shepherds, Emmett Till was buried with an open casket, those four innocent girls were killed in the blast, and those three CORE volunteers disappeared. All of his white friends signed up like enlistees volunteering to fight Hitler, so he felt compelled to pick up the cause as well.

​

What was it that President Kennedy used to say? he asked himself on the bus. Ask not what you can… ‘Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.’ Yeah, but why do I have to do it? There’s plenty of people out there stronger than me and willing to lay down their lives for the cause, so why do I have to do it? There’s plenty of people on this bus already. They wouldn’t miss one single person, would they? Yeah, but what if everybody thought that way? Then there wouldn’t be anybody to march on Washington. The Lincoln Memorial and the reflecting pool would be completely empty—But why me?—Shut up. Why me? Why anyone?! Stop whining.

​

He remembered that monk he saw on the news a year ago, and how he just sat there with his eyes closed and the calmest stoic expression on his face while the flames ate his flesh away. What was he protesting again? Oh, yeah, it was President Diem’s oppression of the Buddhists. How could he do that? Just sat there in the middle of the street while his friends pour gasoline on him and light him on fire. That huge act and statement, all for an idea, a cause, that he’ll never see. And Vietnam is still in chaos. He remembered the remains, too: the body laid on its back with its limbs curled and the clothes burnt off, looking like a giant charred baby. How can he do that? 

​

The bus continued its incursion into the wilderness along the asphalt river that hacked its way through the jungle. The trees outside rushed by and blurred together into a dark shadow while a primeval mist swept through its deepest parts. The canopies blotted out the sunlight while chattering above in foreign tongues only the jungle understands. This could be the jungle of a million years ago.

​

On the shores of the asphalt river where the long vines and huge roots grow, stood a row of black and white signs older than the last one and looking like decapitated heads on pikes: “RACE MIXING IS COMMUNISM,” “STOP RACE MIXING, THE MARCH OF THE ANTICHRIST,” “COMMUNISTS INFILTRATED OUR CHURCHES AND NOW IT INTEGRATES OUR SCHOOLS (2 PETER 2:12),” and “DEATH TO ALL RACE MIXERS! BE A PAUL REVERE, RALLY YOUR NEIGHBORS, SHOOT THE RACE MIXING INVADERS!” And above these signs, mounted on the tallest pike, the American flag waved goodbye.

 

​

His Muslim friends back home in Chicago always criticized him for being “whitewashed” and “whiter than white.”

​

“Why do you worship white culture?” his best friend would ask, leaning against the gray lunch counter next to the Coca-Cola machine in one of their Muslim cafes.

​

“I don’t worship white culture,” the young man would answer.

 

“Really? I mean, just look at your record collection.”

​

“Hey, don’t judge me! I’ve seen you dancing to Elvis.”

​

“That was just a phase, and you know it!” his best friend quickly defended himself.

​

The young man looked off with a grin while his best friend continued lecturing him: “Plus, you pray to a white God and a white Jesus. Jesus was a Hebrew from the Middle East, so why does he have white skin, blue eyes, and Aryan hair?”

​

The young man tried to distract himself by focusing on the menu in his hands but could only see the differences: no bacon, no alcohol. So, he turned to his friend—all the light and bright colors seemed to be concentrated into that little, colorful bowtie at the base of his neck. 

​

“There’s nothing wrong with being religious,” the young man answered after a considerable pause. “You guys are religious.”

​

“Islam is the natural religion of the Black Man. Christianity, or the version you practice, was forced onto us by the White Devil and the slave masters to keep us docile, trying to attain some kind of pie-in-the-sky equality in heaven, when we can and should have equality now.”

​

He laughed him off. “You guys are crazy. I could never be a Muslim; I like bacon too much.”

​

“Minister Malcolm asks us, ‘Who taught you to hate yourself?’ Shouldn’t you be proud of your own culture, heritage, and race? Shouldn’t you take pride in your own natural looks? And shouldn’t our history books have more than a single paragraph dedicated to the centuries of our history and struggle? There’s nothing wrong with being proud of your own identity, is there?”

​

“No, I guess not.”

​

Eventually, the conversation switched to each of their summer plans. They joked about summertime in the South and imagined white supremacists on beach towels in nothing but swimming trunks and tanning mirrors held underneath their white Klan hoods.  

​

But his friend became serious again: “Yeah, but you’re never gonna get anywhere with those tactics like that ‘Farce on Washington.’”

​

“It’s a good cause,” the young man countered. “We’re helping these people—building schools, educating the—” 

​

“Even if you did register every black man, woman, and child down there and form your own political party, Congress would still find some way of stopping any black man from stepping into a voting booth. ‘You have to pay a poll tax, you have to be able to read, you have to lick your elbow to vote in this country!’ No, we ought to take what’s rightfully ours and what has been stolen from us for over a millennium by ‘any means necessary.’”

​

The young man pushed against the counter with his foot causing him to swivel side to side on his stool.

​

In response, his best friend slowed down to a calmer, more empathetic speed: “Look, our whole life is a struggle. Our very existence is a protest. Merely by living happily and not partaking in self-destructive behavior like drugs and alcohol and crime, like the White Man wants you to do, is an act of defiance. This café is a political statement. Only by submitting to Allah and living correctly can we truly be free.”

​

His best friend affectionately put his hand on his shoulder like an older brother and smiled at him.

​

“I know—thank you.”

 

“This is a completely new battlefield,” the instructor told them at orientation. “It’s not like the urban New South, this is the rural Old South, so the movement’s main tactics won’t work here. We’re going into the belly of the beast, the ‘Heart of Darkness’ itself where Emmett Till was murdered and Medgar Evers assassinated. There’s no cameras or CBS news crews and no law and order either, and the few that are there will often turn a blind eye. So peaceful mass demonstrations won’t work against vigilantism, night riders, and the KKK.”

​

Some of the SNCC veterans were already losing patience and dropped the “Non-violent” part in their name. One in particular was there at orientation and interrupted the instructor. He was a hardened, grizzled veteran who left his childhood behind on the battlefields of the jails and streets of Albany, Birmingham, and Washington.

​

“Those tactics will never work,” he interrupted. “Non-violence is just a tactic, not a moral principle you have to abide by, and tactics change according to circumstance. We can’t wait forever until white northerners finally decide to support us. They’re fickle, they change according to the latest news report, and when it comes down to it, they’ll show their true colors. We can’t persuade them and say, ‘pretty please’ and ask nicely. The only language people understand nowadays is POWER.”

​

The young man noticed that the veteran had crazy eyes that skidded across the room and heavy bags underneath filled with experience, and every time he would say the word “white” or referred to “them,” he would look directly into the audience of predominantly white students with some color splashed in between. These looks were more of general stare-downs with the entire room, but the young man felt that the veteran’s eyes lingered on him more than most. Every time he said “white” or “them,” the young man felt like a defendant being cross-examined on the stand.

​

The instructor tried to salvage his presentation: “Exactly. That’s why we’re going down there: to help register black voters and get some black folk into Congress. As I was saying, prepare to bring your own bail money. Also make sure to buy yourself a copy of Strive Toward Freedom and Killers of the Dream to… mentally prepare yourselves.”

​

“Yeah, but what we really need is economic power and leverage,” the SNCC veteran interrupted again. “The only way we’ll ever be equal and be able to look eye-to-eye with these whites is by supporting our own. Not relying on the white business owners for everything, grow our own independent and separate economic power. That’s the only way: empowerment.”

​

The SNCC veteran was only 26. Protesting had made him old as he held the weight of the world on his shoulders.

 

The two white college students across the aisle of the bus were laughing. They actually looked excited and enjoying themselves as if this was some kind of adventure or excursion into the American South.

​

They got it easy, the young man thought while staring at them from his lonely seat across the aisle. The only reason they’re on this bus and SNCC accepted them is because we know their white moms will make a fuss if they die and the whole nation will mourn their deaths. When the Klan abducts us, they’ll get off easy with a bullet to the head each, the police will still be able to recognize their faces, their mothers will be able to afford open caskets, and their penises will be intact. I can’t afford that kind of luxury.

​

He thought a little harder on the strategic benefits of having them there: It’s a pretty cynical and pessimistic tactic. They’re our white shields. Well, even sending in the children at Birmingham was a pretty immoral move, sending in children to fight your battles for you. But then again, it worked. That’s what people respond to. These are the costs we have to pay. 

​

One of the white students pulled out a folk guitar with a sticker that said, “This Machine Kills Fascists” and began strumming riffs on it over his knee.

​

A guitar? What good will that do down here? Who do you think you are? Woody Guthrie?

​

The student with the guitar got tuned up and began the opening riff and the other student accompanied it with his vocals:

 

How many roads must a man walk down before you call him a man? 

​

How many seas must the white dove sail before she sleeps in the sand? 

​

Yes, and how many times must the cannonballs fly before they’re forever banned? 

​

The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind.

 

The answer is blowin’ in the wind.

 

“Blowin’ in the Wind” by Bob Dylan was always a controversial subject for the young man. The first time he ever heard it, it filled his heart with so much inspiration and a quiet sadness, but by the end, it filled it with envy and jealousy. How can this 20-something-year-old white boy from Duluth, Minnesota, write about something I’ve been suffering with my whole life and my father and his father, too? And put it down into words better than I can? So succinctly, too. What the hell does he know? Nobody’s ever questioned his manhood; his natural, inalienable rights aren’t debatable; whether or not his rights should be respected is never ambiguous.

​

But he couldn’t deny the beauty of the melody nor the simple complexity in the lyrics. It was a good song, and he felt a feeling of delight when he saw Dylan with his guitar at the same podium Dr. King spoke at. It was like seeing an old friend.

​

If children can go on national television and explain why they’re protesting and if a white boy from Minnesota can sing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, then you can take a bus ride through the South, right? Yeah, but I’m not like them. I’m not like Dr. King, or Rosa Parks, Medgar Evers, or those brave sit-in boys. I can’t stand up again after being beaten down. I’m not strong like them. You don’t remember people like me. You don’t remember the individual soldier that stormed the beach at D-Day or the individual protester at the March on Washington. You don’t remember the average people in historical events. All you remember are the leaders and the great men: Dr. King, DuBois, Washington, Douglass, X. They come up with the plans and give out the orders, but we’re the ones who have to risk our necks only to be forgotten. Nobody will remember my contribution to this great struggle, nobody will write books about me, I won’t appear in any textbooks. I’ll be completely and utterly anonymous as if I didn’t exist.

​

The sweet scent of fresh apples filtered into the bus. He looked out the window to see the forest end and the bus pass by a plantation. A huge mansion that looked tiny on the horizon surrounded by an ocean of golden crops and fields with little black islands popping up in between the waves. The workers looked like humpback whales arching over the waves with their backs bent in straining postures and facing the blazing sun. It was a very beautiful and picturesque scene worthy of being painted. The only thing ruining this image was the barn hidden off to the side.

​

The barn was screaming bloody murder with its windows and doors open, forming a horrified expression. The face was covered in blood red war paint like an Indian with its eyes wide open, its yellow hairs all standing on edge at the top, and the mouth frozen in a perpetual howl with cold white lips. And the face was frozen in this expression of agony and pain, swallowing entire workers and vomiting cows.

 

He put his palm against his mouth and leaned against the window, looking at all those exhausted, sweating workers in the Southern heat.

​

​

Do you think Dr. King gets nervous before demonstrating? I’m sure he does. He probably gets butterflies in his stomach before every speech, and his hands probably shake before leading his followers down the street. But he puts up with it every time--- In my defense, this is perfectly natural. Isn’t it only human, all too human, to fear for your life and avoid danger? Isn’t it human to not want to take risks and save your own skin? Isn’t it human to cling to life? In a way, I’m more human, natural, and logical than all these people. Can you really blame me for that? Blame me for being human?

​

​

He thought about his own rhetorical question for a second despite knowing the answer before he even asked it. Just face it: you’re a coward. You’re a selfish fucking coward. A race traitor. A coward who cares more about himself than anything. You deserve to rot. Pathetic.

​

He sank down into his seat and rubbed his closed eyes in small circles over and over again. He looked completely exhausted and deflated like a wet rag thrown lazily on the back of a chair. He didn’t have the energy or will to do anything, so he just sat there.

 

He was eventually woken up by an awful smell. When he did, the plantation was gone. That beautiful scene was now replaced with a shanty town—rows upon rows of makeshift houses with their roofs caving in, their walls cracked, and porches dusty. For a second, he thought that this was the plantation, reduced to ruin and desolation after years of neglect, but he quickly put it together.

​

He strained his eyes to see into the open doors and windows of the houses. The majority of them were bereft of any furniture except for a table in the middle, a few chairs, and a bed, all covered in dust, cockroaches, and rats. The soil was a barren, brown dirt with small patches of grass here and there. It reminded him of Grapes of Wrath and those old photos of Okies in the Dust Bowl.

​

At first the town seemed deserted. A rude, dusty wind blew through the exteriors, emphasizing their lack of life. He just assumed everyone was out. But then he spotted movement: two little black feet covered in grime and scabs stepped out onto the porch. The boy wore blue overalls with one strap snapped and hanging loose off the side and no shirt underneath. He was chewing something in between his yellow teeth as he squinted at the bus driving by with a quizzical look. He had the same eyes as that SNCC veteran at orientation: bogged down by experience and full of fury no one could quite understand, and the young man got that same feeling he had with the veteran when this boy stared at him and all the white people on the bus.

​

When the bus got far enough away so the young man couldn’t see the little boy anymore but still felt his eyes, the young man sank even lower. His nice clothes suddenly felt constricting as they choked the life out of his lungs. His watch became a tight cuff that turned his wrist purple. His fat wallet filled with emergency funds felt like a heavy stone dragging him deeper into the murky waters. And his head ached under the weight of protest philosophies, tactics, and theorems, things this boy never even heard of. That boy’s dreams extended only to the  immediate hunger of tomorrow. The young man wanted to give all this up and transfer it to this boy. All his fears, anxieties, and worries felt so temporary and transient all of a sudden.

​

How can I be so selfish? I can’t even spare a few weeks of my great life to come down here and help these people? They have to live with this fear every single day of their lives. How can I live with so much while these—my people live with so little? 

​

He shifted a little in his seat, straightening out his posture and rising a little higher. He lingered on that small correction he caught in his speech: “My people.” He looked over the bus and finally noticed all the other people riding with him. There were some ladies with their purses next to them and dark sunglasses on, staring bravely out the window. There were some grizzled veterans in deep thought and meditation. And there were young white students, shaking nervously with their hands together, twiddling their thumbs.

​

For a moment he felt like he could see their thoughts before him laid out before him, stretching across the entire length of the bus. They were all the same. They all felt it as it lingered on everyone’s minds and hovered in the air like a foul stench no one wanted to address. But it wasn't evil. It wasn't foul, it wasn't malicious, and it wasn't weakness either. It was natural and human, all too human. They sat in silence, but they could all see it as it connected and ran through them making them brave together.

​

And that is when he realized it: These aren’t distant strangers—I’m not alone.

​

He turned to the window and gazed out over that long, endless land that stretched into infinity over the fields and pasture, over the mountains and streams, and over the oceans and rivers. And he thought about the Muslims in their mosques, his father in the courtrooms, his mother at home, that boy in overalls, all the protestors in their office branches across the nation. He thought about the people in Harlem, he thought about the people in Watts, he thought about the monks in Vietnam, all the people behind the Iron Curtain, and all the dreamers in between, and sighed.

​

Those are the real heroes. Of course, the great men leading them deserve their praise, too, but without us, the forgotten masses in this long march of history, nothing could happen—Yeah, this is worth fighting for—But what if you die?—Then I’ll die. I’ll be a martyr if I have to—I’ll try to avoid it as long as possible, but at least my temporary suffering and death will spread awareness to the constant suffering and death we face down here—I don’t want to die and I’m not ready, but if I have to, then I’ll try my best to take it all bravely.

​

A song came to his mind in that moment as it rang through his head like a bell. He heard it a couple months back on the Tonight Show and focused on a few lyrics in particular. He couldn’t remember them exactly, but it went something like:

​

It's been too hard living,

But I'm afraid to die,

'Cause I don't know what's up there,

Beyond the sky...

Oh, there been times that I thought

I couldn’t last for long,

But now I think I’m able to carry on.

It’s been a long time coming,

but I know a change a-gonna come.

Oh, yes it will...