Get On The Bus

Christmas Eve, while the cornbread was in the oven, and the smoked turkey boiling in the pot waiting for the green beans to be added, I turned off Christmas music and tuned on the television.

GET ON THE BUS, Roger Guenveur Smith (second from left), director Spike Lee, Ossie Davis, Charles S. Dutton, Richard Belzer, 1996, (c)Columbia Pictures

The movie, “Get on The Bus” was on. Get on the Bus is a Spike Lee film, released in 1996 on the one-year anniversary of the Million Man March. In the film, there are 12 Black men from Los Angeles on a bus bound for Washington, D.C.   The only thing that the men have in common is their race. They are various ages and their careers range from petty thief to police officer.

There is a scene in the movie that takes place when the bus is pulled over by State Troopers in Knoxville, Tennessee.   Getting out of the police car with a dog, the Trooper, played by Randy Quaid, tells the men that they are checking for drugs. Gary, who is bi-racial and a Los Angeles police officer, introduces himself to the Trooper and shows his badge. It means nothing to the Trooper, who has the Sherman Shepherd dog brought on the bus.  As the dog sniffs each row of seats, the Trooper shines his flashlight into the face of each man, asking them if they wanted to confess to having drugs before the dog finds them. The men shielded their eyes from the blinding flashlight as the Trooper calls them “boys.”