The Negro and the Church

One of the anachronisms of life in this city is the device used to enforce segregation on the buses: a small wooden sign marked “For Colored Only” with two pegs that fit in slots on the backs of seats. This sign is called a “screen,” deriving from the old days when chicken-wire screens separated the races on the trolleys. Nowadays the screen is moved back and forth by Negroes and whites, depending on available seats, but no matter how crowded the Negro section of the bus there are always twelve seats reserved for whites, since the screen cannot be moved past the first transverse row of seats. White people frequently ask Negroes to move back so the whites can sit; Negroes rarely ask the whites to move forward.

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