Quote Response Paragraph

In the novel Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin, the author is a white man who is eager to explore the life of a black man. With medication he turns his skin dark and begins living the life of an average black man. He is no longer treated with respect and courtesy but rather the opposite. He explains how he has never felt such deliberate cruelty towards him. For example, when he was tired of walking and decided to catch a bus to go back home. He was ready to get off at his stop, the bus doors where open and as soon as he was going to step off. The bus doors closed shut in his face. He asked again if he could get off but the bus driver refused to open the doors again and responded to every request John made with a rude impatient tone. He decided to go back to his seat and he saw a woman watching him with sympathetic anger but she did not speak. He finally got off eight blocks past his stop when a group of white passengers got off. The quote, "The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people" by Martin Luther King Jr. examplifies perfectly what has happened to John. The woman had not stand up or said anything for John when she did not approve of the way the bus driver was treating John which hurt John equally as much as the way the bus driver was treating him.