Down the way I could see one of the white men stubbing a lit cigarette against the back of a guy in our group, though I couldn t tell who it was in the swirl of the action. I got back on my stool and sat there, not saying a word. The others did the same. Violence does beget violence, but the opposite is just as true. Hitting someone who does not hit back can last only so long.
Fury spends itself pretty quickly when there s no fury facing it.
We could see in the mirror on the wall in front of us the crowd gathered at our backs. They continued trying to egg us on, but the beating subsided. At the same time, we would learn later, the same thing was happening in the other stores. Yellow mustard was squeezed onto the head of one black male student in Kress s while the crowd hooted and laughed. Ketchup was poured down the shirt of another.