Introduction
As his final night run to Georgetown University ended in the early morning of May 17, 1968, bus driver John Earl Talley stopped at approximately 1:20 a.m. and picked up four passengers on his empty bus at 20th and P Streets in Northwest Washington. After boarding, the passengers attempted to rob Talley’s change box, a required piece of equipment for drivers. Talley reached for his gun, two gunshots rang out, and Talley lost control of the bus as it continued down P Street. Two policemen in Dupont Circle witnessed the event and ran after the bus. The four youths fled after the bus stopped, and they were all eventually arrested. The police found Talley dead in the driver’s seat with two gunshots to the head. Despite the arrest of the perpetrators, Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) Local 689 officials immediately instructed night shift drivers not to carry change boxes, and the drivers threatened to strike. D.C. Transit President O. Roy Chalk agreed that suspending the use of change boxes would be an acceptable temporary solution. After Washington Deputy Mayor Thomas W. Fletcher pledged more police patrols, bus drivers called off the wildcat strike, although they remained unsure whether the rising rate of bus driver assaults would ever end.