Lunch Counter, Summer 1959, Amarillo, Texas

Lunch Counter, Summer 1959, Amarillo, Texas



I was always sorry that we didn’t get arrested;

For years I felt guilty for arranging the

Compromise that allowed us to eat lunch together.



Liberal Religious Youth, on our way from L.A.

To a national convention in Toronto that summer,

Black and white kids, the only two colors those days.



I worked for months to earn the money, mowed

Sidewalks, swept lawns, sat on babies, gloating

Over the map of our long trip, the states to cross.



Our Greyhound charter bus full of song, eating

Roadside in the desert. Some bus drivers made sure

They drove us for our return trip; now I realize



They were taking a stand of approval for more

Than just our spirit of joy and riot. All was

New for a fifteen year old. Big girl sisters



Advised about love, demonstrated a hickey on my arm,

Gave hope of entering a new country that

Had been closed to me. Crossing Arizona, New Mexico,



And now the panhandle. In Amarillo, as I stepped down

And off the bus, for first time on southern soil, I saw

Mounted on bus station wall, a neon sign, bright blue



Cursive writing, over a gleaming tailed and pointing

Arrow, “Colored Waiting Room.” The wonder

Of that moment is still with me, fresh with its



Complacent institutionalized wrongness. (Later,

In Oklahoma, there was no sign, just a very small

Room full of black people who knew where to sit.)



One of my friends refused to leave the bus, indignant

At the insult, later became editor of a communist paper.

My friend Reba got thrown out of a bathroom not right



For her. In a black and white world color sure meant

A whole lot. So, teenagers, needing food and adventure,

We strolled into town and came to a lunch counter.



“We can’t serve you,” said the waitress not much older

Than the eight or ten of us seated at her table. “Why not?”

She gestured waving her hands at our faces, It’s just…”



I said, “We’re not leaving. Look, we’ll order for our friends.”

And in her newness, probably not reporting to anyone, the

Day a slow one at her restaurant, she brought us our food.



Fifty years passed I see that there was peril, danger;

Police were waiting when we left the lunch counter,

Somehow they’d been notified of this unprecedented



Confluence of events, following us back to the bus station,

Seizing the Danish student’s knife strapped to his thigh,

Eyeing us, waiting, watching strangeness, ready to act.


Michael Muller