Read from Chapter 1, "In Front of Speed's" in Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus: A Daughter's Civil Rights Journey by Ana Maria Spagna:

"The paint-peeling sign above the door is barely legible: Speed’s Grocery. I stand on the sidewalk sweaty with nerves. This can’t be the place, I think. This is nothing like I pictured. Behind heavy iron bars, darkened windows sport stickers for cigarette brands: Newport, Camel, Winston. Men with graying beards and ball caps pulled low lean against the storefront, paper bags in hand, while I loiter across the narrow tree-lined street, rereading the plywood sign. Beer Milk Ice it reads, and below that, Meats Bread Grocery Lotto. Beside each line of words coils a hand-painted rattler, the mascot of Florida A&M University, only two blocks east. But there are no students here, no one younger, by the looks of it, than forty. There are also no women. I’ve been in crowds like that before, plenty of times, but this time it’s different. There are no white people in front of Speed’s, and I have never, in thirty-eight years, been the only white person anywhere.

I snap a picture and hesitate before I step off the curb and cross the street, walking fast, too fast, in dress loafers and too hot black jeans, a brand-new digital camera dangling from my wrist.

“Leonard Speed?” I ask. “Dan Speed? Anybody know them?”

The men are silent.

One fellow, his eyes cataract scarred and rheumy, tells me that he’s from New Jersey and that he’s trying to find work. He stares at me hard.

“I’m a good worker,” he says.

I nod uneasily.

Another guy leans back on a car hood and grins wide, gamely pretending to pose for the camera, album-cover style. I smile shyly and pretend to snap a photo.

“This place for sale?” he asks.

“No,” I laugh. “I mean, I don’t know.”

Finally, a third man, more dignified, tall and heavyset and mustached, steps forward. His approach is more direct.

“What are you doing here?”

His age and stature, his bearing—or maybe the mustache—remind me of my father, so I think this might be my chance. I garner my courage.

“My dad used to hang out here fifty years ago.”

“Your dad? What’s his name?”

“Joe Spagna.”

“Joe Spagna?” He draws out the last name “Spaaawn-yuh?”
Questioning. Unbelieving. I grow hopeful. He could have known him. He looks about the right age, and it seems like he’s recognized the name. “Spaaawn-yuh? A Spanish guy?”

My dad wasn’t Spanish. He was Italian. Actually, he was white. Just plain white. And that’s what this guy is getting at, I know: what would a white guy be doing hanging around a place like this? That’s part of what I want to know too."