The militant tried to wave him down, but Tibbs would not be stopped. “I know more about being a Negro than you ever will, because I fought for the right to live in the South before civil rights was in the dictionary.”
With his right arm he elbowed the bigger man aside almost as though he were not there. When he continued a fire of urgency burned in his words, and total intensity had seized the features of his face.
“I heard about Booker Washington and George W. Carver and then like a kid I dreamed that some day a great man would come, with a black skin, that the whole world would look up to and honor.”
“And when we looked there was Martin Luther King. Nobody shoved him aside when he stood up to accept the Nobel Prize, but some bastard couldn’t stand it, so he shot him. And while things like you cried for black power and started riots that ripped apart the Negro sections in Newark and Detroit other men stood up to take his place.”
He stopped suddenly, his teeth clamped hard together. Then he consciously regained control of himself; when he spoke again it was almost calmly. “I work here because nobody cares whether I’m black or white, just so long as I do my job. I clawed my way up against prejudice, I licked poverty, and I earned my job. And here. I’m not a black man, I’m Virgil Tibbs, a respected police officer, and nobody asks for anything more. I just caught a murderer who’s in a cell upstairs. Now who the hell are you!”
He had nothing more to say after that. He knew that he could not change the jeering mob of professional militants, but he could show that he was not afraid. He knew that he had done that.
He turned on his heel and outwardly as calm as he had been when he had come out, he walked back into the aging building which houses the headquarters of the Pasadena police.