As a teenager living in upstate New York in the early 50’s, the thought of crossing the Mason-Dixon line was the same as if I were going to a foreign country. It was with mixed feelings that my fellow enlistees and I boarded the troop train headed for Parris Island in l953. The miles rolled by as we crossed the flat New Jersey plains, the wide Delaware, made a brief stop in Philadelphia for recruits and then headed for Maryland and the Mason-Dixon line.

It was somewhat of a surprise to find that the landscape didn’t change south of the line and I was somewhat disappointed. However, we changed trains in D.C. and proceeded south on the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac RR. Very gradually the topography changed as the rivers and streams became shallower, more sluggish, and trees and brush hung over their banks. What wasn’t so subtle were the signs labeled “Colored Only” on the train station platforms flashing by. To a northern boy, this was the first hint that I had entered into a new social order.

Although President Truman had recently integrated the armed forces, most of the nation’s military bases were still in the south. In essence, what we had was a series of integrated compounds surrounded by a segregated society. This dual perception of the social order of things played out in our daily living and working amongst the races. In my squad, several black Marines shared our quarters and were part of the team. We learned to work with and trust each other as part of the Marine Corps way of life. However, once we stepped off base, the other social order took over and we were helpless at the time to do anything about it. Even our northern accents were enough to arouse suspicion in small southern towns and, in one case, succeeded in getting my buddy and meescorted out of New Bern, NC for inadvertently driving in the “wrong” part of town. The sheriff’s deputies that stopped us were straight out of “Cool Hand Luke,” sunglasses and all.

Corporal Boatwright, a black Marine, and I shared a cubicle and became close friends. On the base we could go to the NCO club for a few 3.2 beers, a game of pool or even to a movie. Both of us received a three-day pass and decided to head home for the occasion. As his home and mine were both up north, we would travel together. The bus station was off the base and that’s where life changed for us. He was black and I was white and in the south of the 50’s never the two should meet socially. While I got my ticket in short order, Boatwright had to stand in a separate line and wait until all the whites had been served before the blacks were taken care of.

When we boarded the bus, the driver pointed Boatwright to the back and I sat somewhere in the middle. It was a long, hot trip on two-lane roads in an un-airconditioned bus. We stopped at several small towns to pick-up passengers and use the facilities. The ubiquitous signs, “Colored Only” were everywhere and as I headed in one direction, Boatwright went somewhere to the rear of the building. This went on for hours until we finally reached the Delaware Memorial Bridge. Once on the other side of the bridge, the spirit of Jim Crow suddenly vanished and the social order between black and whites changed as if we had passed through an episode of the “Twilight Zone.”

Boatwright and I sat next to each other the remainder of the way to NYC and I could see by his demeanor that he didn’t want to talk about the trip. I felt like two cents that my buddy and roommate had been subjected to such degrading treatment. In the Marine Corps, it had been drilled into us to always rely on each other. I wasn’t there for him and he knew that I couldn’t be, given the social climate of the era.

Since those days, I have lived and traveled extensively in the south and, fortunately, a trip like we made in the 50’s could no longer be made today. Unfortunately, prejudice doesn’t require a Mason-Dixon line; any warped mind will do.