“I will tell it to you like it was told to me,” said Simple. “You know Buddy’s brother is a taxicab driver, don’t you? Well, the other day he was telling me he was driving his cab downtown on Broadway last week when a white man hailed him, got in, and then said in one of them slow Dixie drawls, “Bouy, tek me ovah to Fefty-ninth Street and Fefth Avahnue.’

“Buddy’s brother told him, ‘I ain’t gonna take you nowhere. Get outta my cab—and quick!’

“The white man didn’t know what was the matter so he says, ‘Why?’

“Buddy’s brother said, ‘Because I don’t like Southerners, that’s why! You treated me so mean when I was in the army down South that I don’t never want to see none of you-all no more. And I sure don’t like to hear you talk. It goes all through me. I spent eighteen months in hell in Mississippi.’

“The white man got red in the face, also mad, and called a cop to make Buddy’s brother drive him where he wanted to go. The cop was one of New York’s finest, a great big Irishman. The copper listened to the man, then he listened to Buddy’s brother. Setting right there in his taxi at 48th and Broadway, Buddy’s brother told that cop all about Mississippi, how he was Jim Crowed on the train on the way down going to drill for Uncle Sam, how he was Jim Crowed in camp, also how whenever he had a furlough, him and his colored buddies had to wait and wait and WAIT at the camp gate for a bus to get to town because they filled the buses up with white soldiers and the colored soldiers just had to stand behind and wait. Sometimes on payday if there were a big crowd of white soldiers, the colored G.I.’s would never get to town at all.

“‘Officer, I’m telling you,’ Buddy’s brother said, ‘that Mississippi is something! Down South they don’t have no nice polices like you. Down South all them white cops want to do is beat a Negro’s head, cuss you, and call you names. They do not protect Americans if they are black. They lynched a man five miles down the road from our camp one night and left him hanging there for three days as a warning, so they said, to us Northern Negroes to know how to act in the South, particularly if from New York.’

“Meanwhile the Southern white man who was trying to get the cop to make Buddy’s brother drive him over to Fifth Avenue was getting redder and redder. He said, ‘You New York Negras need to learn how to act.’

“‘Shut up!’ says the cop. ‘This man is talking.’