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and then when we came back to the loading dock, he said I was a heap better driver than he was himself and sure wished he could hire me. That’s exactly what he said. But he didn’t hire me. He said he was sorry about it, but just couldn’t do it as long as things stayed the way they are. I asked him how long did he figure that was going to last. He said only God knows for sure and God won’t talk for fear of making some white folks so mad they’d stop going to church and paying the preacher.
    He was real friendly about talking to me and that’s how come I mentioned to him that nearly every town on the highways has eating places for Negro people and I could stop at one of those kind to eat and not go nowhere near the places where white people don’t want me. He said he knew all about that, but it still wouldn’t do. He said the heavy trucks his company runs have to stay on their routes on the pavement and not be pulled off on dirt streets where they might get mired down in rainy weather or tip over in a ditch while I was eating.
    I reckon he was right about that. Nearly everywhere you go the eating places for the colored are on a side street nowhere near the main highway. I learned about that when I was driving in the army and I know what could happen to ten tons of truck on a soft dirt street. I wouldn’t want to take a risk like that and see my rig get ditched and harm my driving record. It just wouldn’t be like me. Anyhow, there ought to be some way to go about it so a colored man can work at that kind of job. It just don’t seem right to me like it is. Any man on the highway ought to be able to stop and eat and wash up once in a while without risking a scuffle and ending up in jail for disturbing the peace.
    The civil rights laws can say certain things, but some white people can figure out ways to get around the law. I don’t know what’s going to happen from now on, but something’s bound to, because our people are working at it as hard as they can. When the young people started sit-ins and things like that all over the country, it didn’t look like it’d amount to much at the time, but that’s turned out to be a big boost ever since. The way they go about it might not look like much, but every inch counts, because the colored people never had even a toe-hold to start with.
    And now we’ve got a real good toe-hold. Some of the old people are scared to their bones about it for fear of making the white folks mad, but that’s all right. I can’t blame the old people for being scared, because they’ve been bossed by the white folks all their lives and don’t see how times can change. The young colored people are getting a good education these days and nothing’s going to scare them. That’s the best thing about it these days for all us colored.
    The big trouble right now is because the white folks have got the habit of having their way about things and they still take first-call. I don’t say all whites are like that. A lot of them are on our side. It’s the ones who do the most talking and get it printed in the newspapers who make the worst trouble for us. One of the things they boast about all the time is building some fine schools for our children, which is true, but that’s still not enough. They stop right there and don’t do a thing about getting the teachers better educated in the colleges. Most teachers don’t know a bit more than the children have already learned. I know about that, because my three daughters go to high school and I hear all about it.
    It’s those same politicians you read about in the newspapers who won’t let me drive a truck from here to Florida for a load of oranges and stop to eat when I’m hungry. I don’t want to eat in their fancy cafés and sleep in their fine motels. That’s what they keep on saying we’re after. Looks like they’d know that a man like me, even if I had a good-pay trucking job, wouldn’t waste my money doing that just for the spite of