I met an amazing fellow tonight. A negro, Bennett Bradshaw. It is the first time in my life I carried on an intelligent conversation with a negro, and the first time I felt intellectually inferior to a negro. I might resent it except that I learned too much.

I went to a socialist meeting, hoping I might hear something important; I was even considering joining—before I went! But when I arrived I found nothing but a bunch of fellows showing each other how much they knew about Marx.

Just after I got there and found a seat, a negro came in and sat next to me. That’s something I will have to go into at length one of these nights: the absence of segregation. At first, I was disturbed by it, not that I mind its absence so much as when you sit somewhere you usually do not take too much notice of who sits next to you. If you are sitting on a trolley and someone sits next to you, usually you glance at him, then ignore him, that is, if he does not sit on your coattail. But when a negro sits next to me I find myself distracted from what I was reading, or from looking out of the window because I am not used to being that close to a negro in public. And so when this negro sat next to me, I noticed, and continued to notice it. He was portly, almost middle-aged looking, and wore a dark suit.

As the meeting began I tried not to stare at him. (I am trying to get over bugging my eyes out each time a negro gets near me.) But as the meeting continued, and these fellows kept trying to impress everybody, I began to squirm and wanted to leave; I do not have that brand of courage. He must have noticed, must have been looking at me because he leaned over and said, in a voice that seemed quite British (later he told me his family was from the West Indies): “These chaps have nothing to say. Would you like to join me for a cup of tea?”

I turned to him and he was smiling slightly, his eyes twinkling.

I do not yet know why I left with him, why I braved the slight offended silence which accompanied our exit; I suppose it was a combination of the following: (1) that he seemed to feel exactly as I felt about the uselessness of the meeting, (2) that he, a negro, should lean over and speak to me so brazenly, so openly, so friendly, (3) or that he was such an (this word may not be exactly right) exotic figure with his British accent. But I did go with him.