By Daniel Wirtheim

I always anticipate the automated text messages from the Amtrak station that tell me my train is going to be late. That’s why I enjoyed a cup of coffee before leaving my house. Sure enough, my train’s new departure time was 7:30 p.m; an hour and a half before the original set time. This gave me time to investigate downtown, and take part in the rally for solidarity with Ferguson.

I met at least 100 people near the Municipal Building, where the march would begin. People with megaphones spoke, moving about the inner-circle and stoking us on. Cakalak Thunder, the meanest political drum corps in Greensboro began to kick the movement into full-gear. Children were dancing, along with the organizers, entranced by the beat.

We began to march towards downtown as I realized the train would leave in less than 20 minutes. Of course, this was one of Amtrak’s lies. In fact, I would wait in that dirty old station until 8:00 p.m., two hours after my scheduled departure time.

I had to pay the extra ten bucks to ride in business class, because all of the coach seats were sold out. I walked down the aisle, looking for a place to sit, avoiding people who looked unfriendly. I wanted someone to talk to. I sat next to an elderly woman, Miss Etta-Lou James.

Miss James was on her way to Charlotte to visit her children. She spoke with a soft southern accent and spent no time hesitating on her introduction.

She had been born and raised on her parents’ farm in Virginia. She decided that she wanted to be a nurse so moved to Washington D.C. where she met her husband George.

George was eight years older than Miss James and friends would often call him “gentle George,” because of his gentle manners. George was stationed in Northern Mongolia during the Second World War and when the war was over he bought a farm for Miss James and himself. They were married between the harvest of corn and soy. George has since passed away and Miss James is going on 87 years old.

Together, Miss James and myself drank ginger ales and talked about growing up in the south, farming, crocheting and a stash of old books she had found from the 1820’s. Her stories seemed to be fresh and she didn’t repeat herself like many old folks seem to do. I felt that she had the voice of a great storyteller.

“I saw the Northern Lights once when I was a young girl in Virginia,” said Miss James. “I remember that we had a colored woman who would help out around the house and I remember her getting down on her knees and saying, ‘oh lord, oh lord.’ You know, I think she thought the world was ending right then.”

Miss James believes that seeing the Northern Lights was the most “magnificent” she had ever seen. As for the “colored woman” who did “chores around the house,” I felt I understood this quite well.

Even though slavery was abolished long before Miss James’ time, deeply trenched racial inequalities were not. Even today it’s not quite abolished. I could link this to thousands of articles on the subject, but they wouldn’t evoke a sense of what’s really going on cities across the south.

It’s the force that drew the people together at the municipal building, and the same force that makes me feel slightly awkward when they mention “white privilege.” I’d like to think that Miss James isn’t a racist, or a hateful person by any means, although I don’t really know. She seemed like a very loving person to me and I wanted to remind myself that her having a slave was no choice of her own.

I wanted to know more and I was sorry when the train stopped at my destination. In one night I had seen two very different views of racial injustice in the United States. It was as if I were a spectator, riding The Carolinian (Editor’s note: that was the actual name of the train) and meeting ghosts along the way, who would tell me there stories and urge me to tell their stories.

I stepped onto the platform and into the little town of Salisbury, the smell of tobacco floating through the air. I couldn’t wait to get out of Salisbury, but I was glad I had taken the train.