Crooks has just had a very unpleasant encounter with Curley's wife. He doesn't have much in life, but he does have his privacy, which he's prepared to defend stoutly to anyone. When Curley's wife comes into Crooks's shack not long after her husband had his hand crushed by Lennie, Crooks find that his accommodation's starting to get rather crowded all of a sudden, what with some of the other men also being there.
In an act of remarkable courage, he stands up to Curley's wife and tells her in no uncertain terms that she has no right coming into his room and that she needs to get out. Curley's wife responds by using a notorious racial slur and warning him that she'll have him lynched if he opens his mouth like that again.
Crooks knows this is no idle threat, so he backs down immediately. It's after Curley's wife has left that Crooks says to the other men,
You guys comin' in an' settin' made me forget. What she says is true.
What he means by this is that the presence of the other ranch hands in his shack made him momentarily forget his place. As an African American, Crooks is segregated from the other men. But when those men came to his shack, he suddenly forgot his lowly place in the ranch's racial hierarchy. This gave him the courage to stand up to Curley's wife and tell her to leave his shack. But as Crooks ruefully reflects, what Curley's wife said about having him lynched was true; she really does have that power over him.
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