by Tonya Latrice Wilson

Created on: May 16, 2008   Last Updated: November 24, 2008

In my hometown of Chicago, we have a lot of trains. We have the pink line, the Brown line, the Blue line, the Orange line, the Purple line, the Green line, and last but not least the Red line. However, the Redline train is by far the worst and the most unsafe and you have to go into the subway to catch it. Now the subway is filled with baggers, and violent people. On the other hand, the subway has its usual performers, such as dancers, aspiring rap artist, preachers, poets, musicians that play an instrument and singers that perform in front of the people that are waiting on their trains to arrive. Rather you want to listen to their singing, instrument, poem, rap or sermon, you're forced to. Now these subway performers to my knowledge do not have a permit to step inside of the trains with the paying riders and perform. The subway performers are only supposed to perform on the subway platform.

Let me quickly explain the train cars. For one Redline train, there may be 8-10 train cars connected. So, 8-10 train cars make one train, and it pretty much works this way no matter which line you chose.
About eight or nine years ago, I was going to 95th street to meet up with my friends. On this day, I felt adventurous and probably should have driven in the car instead. However, it would have been a lot of gas to burn going over to my friend's house in a car. So I decided to let them pick me up at 95th Street (The busy Greyhound stop). Now, no other train line will go to 95th except, the Redline. Anyway, on this day, I transferred over from the blue line to the Redline at the Jackson stop. Now when I got on the train at eight in the morning, it was filled with well dressed Caucasian business type looking men and women. They were all seated and it was not crowed on this train car. I don't know why I chose the first train car; I usually would have picked the middle car or the next to the last train car. Now, I wasn't very happy, because when I looked around the train car that I was seated in, I noticed that I was the only African American woman on this train car, and the Red line is normally, the wild car. Normally, street hustles are selling Cd's, in-cents, phone cords, and cigarettes, while on board this train. However, on this particular day, it was strangely quite and stiff. I thought to myself, is POE- POE (the police) on the train today or what.
It was about 8:30 am in the morning and I do believe that, aside from one, very light skinned, extremely well dressed, African

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