“But steel bars have never yet kept out a mob it takes something a good deal stronger: human courage backed up by the consciousness of being right.”
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The very first time I was on a car in Atlanta, I saw the conductor - all conductors are white - ask a Negro woman to get up and take a seat farther back in order to make a place for a white man. I have also seen white men requested to leave the Negro section of the car.
It is not short of amazing, the power of a great idea to weld men together. There was in it a peculiar, intense, vital spirit if you will, that I have never felt before in any strike.
You take a number of small steps which you believe are right, thinking maybe tomorrow somebody will treat this as a dangerous provocation. And then you wait. If there is no reaction, you take another step: courage is only an accumulation of small steps.
Let who will boast their courage in the field, I find but little safety from my shield, Nature's, not honour's law we must obey: This made me cast my useless shield away.