“The Color of Truth – August 8, 1955” is episode seven of season one of Quantum Leap.
At the end of the previous episode, “Double Identity – November 8, 1965”, Sam sat down at a lunch counter and only then realised he was in a black man. And everyone else in the place was white. Two men are going to teach Sam a lesson, but the woman whose place it is says she doesn’t want to spend the entire afternoon cleaning up blood, so take Miz Melny’s lunch and go.
Sam leaves; he doesn’t know where he is other than too far south the be a black man. A woman is calling him; this is Miz Melny. She complains that Jessie – Sam – left her standing in the heat. Sam notices that the car is open and the keys are in it, and she then complains he should never leave the car unlocked.
Sam asks where they’re going. Miz Melny says she’s supposed to be the one getting old and senile, or so Clayton keeps telling her. They’re going where they’ve gone every Saturday afternoon for the last seven years; to see Charles. Sa, needs directions to the cemetery and once they get there, has to stop Miz Melny from pulling out the weeds herself. She’s reminiscing about her lost son and Sam says it’s hard losing someone you love. Miz Melny says Jesse knows that as much as she does, as his Sally lost four. Charles thought highly of Sally.
Sam goes to throw the weeds away and Al tells him there weren’t public trash cans in the 50s. Sam thinks him being black is fascinating. Al says it’s dangerous, being a black man in the South in 1955. According to Ziggy, Sam is here to prevent Miz Melny being killed when her car is struck by a passenger train tomorrow. They are having difficulty getting any info on Jesse, but that’s not uncommon. Al talks about the civil rights marches, which he was on, but he doesn’t think Sam is there to get involved.
Sam returns Mz Melny to her home where her son, Clayton, is waiting. He wants to talk to Jesse, and it’s nothing his mother needs to fret about. He speaks to Jesse in the kitchen about him sitting down in Miz Matty’s. Sam talks back to him, which doesn’t go down so well.
Clayton tells his mother they have to talk. She doesn’t care what Jesse did at Miz Matty’s. Even if her husband was the governor. After Clayton has gone, Miz Melny doesn’t feel so good. She calls for Jesse and Sam tries to check her out. She doesn’t know, of course, that he does has a medical degree.
There’s a knock and a girl tells Jesse – Sam – she’s so proud of him. Mz Melny asks if that’s Jesse’s Nell come to fetch him home. She’d hoped to get him to look at the leaky faucet, but that can wait until tomorrow. Sam checks that Mz Melny will be okay, as he doesn’t like leaving her alone. She tells Jesse to let his granddaughter take him home.
Nell wants to talk about Mz Patty’s. And how she wants to do all the things that make the white folks mad. Because it makes them mad. And because it’s right. Jesse apparently had promised to cook chitlins for the church picnic. Sam not only doesn’t know how to cook chitlins, he finds them disgusting. Al has a great recipe and really wishes he could be there to eat them.
The episode naturally has a lot around the theme of racism, and Sam spends a lot of time being furious with people. Mz Melny, though, seems a genuinely nice person who just happens to have some of the prejudices of her time.