In 1944, a bus driver rolling through downtown Durham demanded that all Black passengers move to the rear, clearing their seats for three white soldiers who had just stepped on-board.
The crowd moved wordlessly back, except for an Army private named Booker T. Spicely, who questioned out loud why one man in uniform should lower himself before another.
“I thought I was fighting a war for democracy,” he said, as one witness recalled. “But it looks like it doesn’t work down here.”…