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the others out strolling around the Hill on Sunday, thinking they were whiter than God—
    At that moment, though, he caught the woman’s eye. She was plain-looking, except for her skin, which was flawless and almost blue-black. She wasn’t even dressed like a preacher’s wife, wearing only that hat with its plastic flowers and an ordinary print dress with more flowers on it, faded from purple to deep lavender. Malcolm wondered for a moment if she wasn’t really his wife at all, but she looked too ordinary to be something on the side. The only exceptional things about her were her fine black skin, and her eyes, which were large and brown and fierce.
    They appealed to him now. Breaking that stare into the middle distance that she had been holding, that he had seen so many times before on the faces of colored people. Here on the train—on his mother, near the end, in the presence of the social workers or the neighborhood ladies when they came by to try to reason with her. She broke it off and stared right at him, her eyes still hard but entreating. Begging him to do something to help them, to help her husband with the soldiers.
    He realized only then what he usually saw the moment he walked into any coach. They were the only colored people in the car. The trains weren’t segregated, at least not north of Maryland, but the colored passengers would usually sit together if they could. Some would even ask, very quietly, where the black car was today. Malcolm always knew it, too. He would never put on much of a show when there were others in the car. His performance on such occasions as stilted as a deacon’s taking around the offering plate, even though he knew they were the only ones who were copped to it, who could hear the sarcasm and the barely veiled insults, just beneath the bowing and the scraping.
    But how much of an insult is it, when they don’t even get it?
    Now he realized they were all alone—himself, and the minister and his wife. The white faces all carefully averted. The men, especially, staring out the windows as if fascinated by the sprawling summer marshes of the South Shore.
    All right then, it’s on me, Malcolm thought, the recklessness growing inside him as he hovered just behind the soldiers.
    â€œC’mon, what’s your secret?” the one across the aisle was saying, picking up his sergeant’s cue. “We wanna get to know some colored ladies, too!”
    â€œC’mon, be a sport ! We wanna get some hot-blooded gals!”
    For a long moment the minister’s eyes stayed fixed on God, somewhere in the suitcase rack above his head. Then, without any warning, he lowered his gaze and spoke directly to the sergeant.
    â€œI am a Negro,” he said, in a dull, flat voice.
    There it was, out in the open. Spoken so suddenly and strangely that it amazed Malcolm, and even the soldiers were flabbergasted into silence for a moment. I am a Negro— the words seeming to burn in the close air around them, so strange and utterly ridiculous.
    The sergeant laughed unpleasantly.
    â€œYer a Negro? Then what the hell’re you doin’ takin’ up a seat when ther’re white men fighting for their country on this train?”
    The preacher said nothing, but the sergeant pressed in still more closely on him, moving his face to within a couple of inches of his. The soldiers closed in around him on cue, smirking at him and at each other—all save for the sergeant, who Malcolm could see was truly angry.
    â€œHuh? Whattaya got to say to that? You black bastard. I been up since five this morning. Where the hell’d you come from? Huh?”
    How long would they let it go on? Malcolm wondered, looking at all the white faces still peering out their windows. Until they cut the preacher, or beat him? Or well after that?
    â€œI think it’s time you stood for your betters!”
    The sergeant grabbed hold of the minister then, the rest of the