White like me

In the late 1950s, journalist John Howard Griffin disguised himself as a black man and traveled through the still segregated South. He chronicled his experiences in his book Black Like Me:

His indoctrination into black life began at a New Orleans bus station. When he politely asked a white clerk for bus times, "she answered rudely and glared at me with such loathing I knew I was receiving what the Negroes call 'the hate stare,'" he wrote. "This was so exaggeratedly hateful I would have been amused if I had not been so surprised." 

In another instance a white bus driver prevented the blacks on the bus, including Griffin, from getting off the bus during a rest stop in Mississippi. Griffin and the others waited in discomfort for the trip to resume.

Eddie Murphy goes undercover as a white man in a 1984 Saturday Night Live sketch that's a satirical take on Griffin's book: "I studied for my role very carefully. I watched lots of 'Dynasty'. . . .And I read a whole bunch of Hallmark cards."

When he ventures out into the world, he finds that strange and unexpected things happen on buses - things that give the term "choice riders" new meaning. (Bus scene starts at 2:35)

(thx Nick K!) (via NBC)