By David Swanson
Michael Nagler tells this story: "One of my close friends, David Hartsough, who is white, was sitting in with a small group of civil rights activists at a segregated lunch counter in Virginia in the early sixties.  They had been sitting there without getting service for close to two days, harassed almost without letup by an increasingly angry crowd.  As neither the sitters nor the proprietors backed down, tension increased.  Suddenly David was jerked back off his stool and spun around by a man who hissed at him, 'You got one minute to get out of here, n------- lover, or I'm running this through your heart.'  David, a birthright Quaker, stopped staring at the huge Bowie knife held at his chest and slowly looked up into the man's face, to meet 'the worst look of hate I have ever seen in my life.'  The thought that came to him was, 'Well, at least I've got a minute,' and he heard himself saying to the man, 'Well, brother, you do what you feel you have to, and I'm going to try to love you all the same.'  For a few frozen seconds there seemed to be no reaction; then the hand on the knife started shaking.  After a few more long seconds it dropped.  The man turned and walked out of the lunchroom, surreptitiously wiping a tear from his cheek."