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“Don’t think that was just an uppity Negro woman,” he said. “That was the whole colored race, which will no longer take your condescending pennies. That was your black double.”

The Black woman acts for all African Americans when she strikes Julian’s mother with her purse at the end of the story, refusing to succumb to any more subjugation and condescension from whites. Julian understands this and tries to explain to his mother why the Black woman hit her. The woman seems to bristle with rage from the moment of her introduction, poised to explode like a volcano. Though she says little, she seems ready to lash out at any person who might treat her with disrespect. Her barely concealed anger represents the anger suppressed by Black Americans through years of slavery, mistreatment, and oppression under white patronage. The fact that she wears the same hat and rides the same bus as Julian’s mother highlights the similarities between the two seemingly very different women. Integration has effectively equalized them.

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