“It offends my friend, John King,” the white, middle-aged, Republican legislator pointed dramatically toward the black lawmaker as she pleaded from the floor of the South Carolina legislature.

“It offends my friend, Reverend Neal,” her voice rose to a shout, so fraught with emotion it appeared she would be unable to finish.

“It offends my friend Mia McLeod!” the lawmaker, State Representative Jenne Horne, pointed at yet a third black legislator and demanded action.

Late at night on C-SPAN, two weeks after the slaying of a black pastor and eight members of his flock in the sanctuary of the Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston by a white supremacist, I had chanced on the televised debate over removing the Confederate flag from the South Carolina State House grounds. Sensing that I was witnessing an historic turning point in what I understood of the South and a moment meaningful in my own life, I sat riveted by the unexpected emotion of the speaker.

In the days following the slayings at the all-black church, family members of the victims forgave the gunman. Stunned by the vileness of the race-hate killings, stirred by the selflessness of the families, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley publicly called for taking down the Confederate flag, for many in the south a symbol of racial hate, from its prominent perch in the state capitol. In 1961, it had been hoisted to the top of the capitol dome in a defiant act, a response to desegregation, and had since flown from a pole on the State House grounds.

Following the governor’s request, the South Carolina Senate, by over a 2/3 majority, voted to remove the flag. But a companion measure in the House of Representatives bogged down in debate that extended well into the night. I watched, caught-up in the cadence of Ms. Horne’s plea, and thought of my friend, Louis Johnson, a black GI. Sixty years ago this very month Louis and I traveled the deep South together in freshly pressed Army uniforms. We faced the stark reality of Jim Crow laws as traveling companions, but from different worlds.

Growing up in the 1940’s in a small rural community cuddled in the hills of southwestern Wisconsin, I rarely saw black people. When we turned seventeen, two of my classmates, Morrie Collins and Darrell Nelson, and I joined our local Army Reserve unit. That summer between our junior and senior years of high school, 1955, we attended two weeks of summer camp at nearby Camp McCoy, Wisconsin, and then volunteered to go to Fort Lee, Virginia, for two months of training at the U.S. Army’s Quartermaster School.

Except for a bicycle trip Morrie and I took when we were 15, crossing the Mississippi River bridge to MacGregor, Iowa, none of us had ever been outside of rural Wisconsin. Most of what we knew about the South we had gleaned from minstrel shows and Walt Disney movies.

We traveled by train overnight from Milwaukee to Cincinnati, Ohio, then changed to the Norfolk and Western’s plush Powhatan Arrow for the journey through Appalachia to tidewater Virginia. As the train crawled through the mountainous regions of Kentucky and West Virginia, past unpainted shanties and weedy patches of corn close by the track, we were fascinated by what we saw through the coach windows. The people were mostly white and looked unhealthy. When they boarded the train, we were astonished at their outlandish accents. In the vestibules out of their earshot, we laughed and mimicked them. Except for the porters and dining car stewards, who treated us very well, we did not see black people on the train.

Ft. Lee was located south of Richmond in the heartland of the defeated Confederacy, but because President Truman had ended segregation in the armed services by executive order just eight years earlier, blacks and whites lived and trained together. The Army bunked us, twenty men each, in a large open room on each of the wooden barrack’s two stories. The men in our building seemed to be an even mix of black and white, and I was fascinated by the different shades of skin color I saw, from white and light brown to a smooth dark almost deep-purple color like eggplant. I was especially intrigued by the different accents and expressions I heard.

The morning of our first formation I was astonished to see that our company commander, Captain White, was black. The executive officer, Lieutenant Robinson, and the first sergeant, Sergeant Sellers, were white. Though both Lt. Robinson and Sgt. Sellers spoke with southern accents, over the next two months I did not witness as much as a blink of disloyalty to Captain White. At home, we knew blacks as comic characters in movies and on the radio. We were familiar with the antics of Amos and Andy, and the bumbling of Step n’ Fetchit. Captain White was unquestionably competent and held the respect of all who served under him. He made it plain that his preoccupation was making us professional soldiers.

I was filled with curiosity about my barrack-mates and tried to learn something from each of them. Most of the men, I found, but more whites than blacks, had been drafted. Typically, the draftees were 22 years of age, married and college graduates. Those who had enlisted, black and white, seemed to be younger and less well educated than the draftees.

As I gleaned bits of information about each of my fellow soldiers, I recorded it beside their names in my coil-bound notebook, making a tally, loosely labeling each of my barrack-mates “soldier,” or “dud.” I tried to test what I had heard about blacks being inferior. I found no correlation between race and military aptitude. Race seemed not to be a factor in a man’s competence or his willingness to serve his country, I concluded.  

Often, after taps, several of us would gather and talk in low voices in the lighted stairwells or on the outside steps of our un-airconditioned barracks. I became good friends with a black GI, Louis, a schoolteacher from St. Louis. He was a quiet, thoughtful man and had a wife and a child back home. My mother wanted me to see Colonial Williamsburg while I was in Virginia; so did Louis, and we made plans for a visit.

On a warm, sunny Saturday morning, dressed in crisp, khaki uniforms, our brass and shoes brightly shined, Louis and I set out. Planning on staying overnight in Williamsburg, we each carried a small duffel bag. We took the Fort Lee shuttle bus into Petersburg riding among other GI’s near the front, but when we changed to the bus to Richmond, Louis was careful to choose two seats mid-way back. I had heard about segregation, but was still surprised to see that blacks, including those who boarded along the way, rode in the back of the bus while the white passengers sat in front of us.

We arrived in Richmond at noon and had a one-hour layover before boarding the bus to Williamsburg. In the terminal, I wasn’t prepared for the ubiquity of the “Whites Only” and “Colored Only” signs that guarded restrooms, drinking fountains and the restaurant. I looked to Louis for direction. He seemed annoyed. I followed him past the White and Colored waiting rooms out to the street.

It appeared to be all right for us to mingle once we were on the sidewalk, and not having seen many cities I wanted to walk around a bit, but Louis hesitated. We need to get something to eat, he said. Louis told me that I would have to go into the cafeteria without him. I hesitated, but he was insistent. Surrounded by all-white diners, I hurriedly ate a hamburger. Through the large front window, I could see Louis, in uniform, patiently waiting on the street.

When I finished, I rejoined Louis on the sidewalk. He said he was going to eat and asked me to wait there, but not wanting to separate, I followed him around to the side of the terminal where the buses exited to the street. The colored restaurant sat on a platform between the bus lanes surrounded by smelly diesel exhaust and the roar of idling engines. The dingy, white-tiled walls had no windows; only a noisy exhaust fan caked in black grease identified the tiny structure as a cafe. Louis told me quietly that I would have to wait outside. Feeling conspicuous in my khaki uniform, I loitered at the end of the platform until he returned.

We had talked a little about Jim Crow laws in our late-night conversations on the barrack steps, but we had not discussed how, or if, they would affect us on our planned trip. Louis knew what the rules were and obeyed them, and I think he was confident enough of me to know that for his sake I would abide by them also. I shrugged-off feeling humiliated but, standing on that hot, smelly bus platform in Richmond, I felt my anger grow. Louis and I were wearing the uniform of our country, but Virginia law said that we could not eat in the same restaurant. We were in a public bus station and facilities were provided for both races, but the cramped, smelly, hidden-away cafe Louis was forced to eat in was clearly inferior to the open, airy, white-only restaurant in the front of the terminal. I felt the wrong, and I wanted to be defiant, but I didn’t know how. Despite my uniform, I felt as helpless as the 17 year-old high school student that I was.

After lunch, we boarded the bus to Williamsburg again finding seats together midway along the aisle. We arrived about two pm and walked the short distance to the historic district. There we mingled with various tours and visited exhibits: the blacksmith shop with a working forge, the jail and the stocks, the printing shop.

We visited the Colonial Inn. In the dining room, guests were served by waiters and waitresses dressed in period costumes. I thought we might return there to eat, but later, when I suggested it to Louis, he was hesitant. Eventually our route did take us back, and we stood looking in at a window. I thought Colonial Williamsburg was a national site, like a park, and I thought the Virginia laws we had encountered in Richmond might not apply here; it was a stretch to imagine being denied service in this monument to American democracy while wearing the uniform of our country. Seeing no signs saying “White Only” or “Colored,” I persuaded Louis we should go into the foyer.

The hostess, an older, white woman in a floor-length costume, did not ask us if we wanted to be seated. Busying herself with white patrons, she avoided meeting our eyes. As we stood waiting, people were escorted in front of us into the dining room. Parents clutched their children by the hand shepherding them past us in silence.

Probably because of our uniforms, no one questioned our standing there. Instead, they ignored us. Southern courtesy, I thought with sarcasm. But, it was all too apparent that the diners were white and only the wait staff was colored. We were not going to be seated. Trying to appear nonchalant, aware that we were obligated to preserve the dignity of the uniforms we wore even though they seemed not to count to the hostess and the white patrons, we turned and quietly left.

Louis and I ate standing on the curb at a hot dog vender’s cart; then in the fading light we walked back to the bus depot. By mutual, silent agreement we abandoned our plan to stay overnight.

As we walked in silence back to the bus station, I replayed the day. Ticket venders and tour guides had been courteous, but no white person had spoken to us. It was as if Louis and I were ghosts; we could see them, hear their small talk, smell their sweat, but they did not acknowledge us. Despite our uniforms, people avoided us even though we were as eager as they to enjoy the historical attraction. They looked away, and I couldn’t explain why. They were embarrassed to see a black serviceman and a white serviceman together, I concluded, and so they pretended we weren’t there.       

It was dark in the bus as we retraced our route back through Richmond and on to Fort Lee. We sat further back than we had earlier in the day. Louis and I talked very little. I sensed he was hurt and that he wanted to be alone. I couldn’t find words that I was sure wouldn’t rub his wound deeper.

It rained, a gentle, soaking night-rain. Listening to the high-pitched whir of the bus tires on the wet highway, I curled into my seat searching for warmth and tried to sleep, no longer caring about rumpling my uniform. Although we spent another month at Ft. Lee, and our late-night conversations on the barrack’s steps continued, we never talked again about race or our trip to Colonial Williamsburg.

 Caught in the moment by Representative Horne’s speech, I flashed back to that evening 60 years ago that Louis Johnson and I tried to eat at the Colonial Inn in Williamsburg. I remembered how people who looked very much like Ms. Horne had treated us even though we were wearing our country’s uniform. I wondered if Louis was watching it, too.

Much has changed in the South over those sixty intervening years. Supreme Court decisions struck down the Jim Crow laws, abolished racially segregated Southern schools, and ended segregation in most aspects of southern life, but I’ve been skeptical that attitudes have changed among many white people in the South. I was willing to believe that Southern states had bent as a result of legal and economic pressure, but that measures such as the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act had been accepted while people kept their fingers crossed behind their backs. My suspicions were confirmed when in 1984, I visited New Orleans during Mardi Gras. I was struck by the predominance of all-black marching bands presumably representing still all-black public schools in New Orleans. A little research confirmed that public education in the South remained a largely segregated affair.

South Carolinians displayed the Confederate Stars and Bars as a symbol of their continuing defiance, a fact noted by Representative Horne. “This is nothing about heritage,” Ms. Horne said, identifying herself as a descendant of Jefferson Davis. “Take it down,” she demanded.

Until that moment, I had not been ready to believe that attitudes of Southern whites towards their black neighbors had changed, but I saw in Representative Horne’s plea a powerful Act of Contrition. In an equally significant act of atonement, the South Carolina House complied, voting 94 to 20 in the small hours of the morning to take down the symbol of racial hate that had flown over the capitol for over fifty years.

I wondered what Louis would have felt if on his TV he was watching Representative Horne that night. Based on the example of the members of Mother Emmanuel AME church who forgave the racist murderer of their pastor and fellow congregants, I think I know. My Catholic Catechism tells me, too, that the time for forgiveness has come.