They had been dancing for some time, drawing steadily closer together. Thoughts had begun to come in his head, and he wondered if in hers, or if they were just dancing. It was quite a crowd. He didn't think he had ever been among so many people at one time, not even at the big Baptist church when Martin Luther King had spoken. It was a big roadhouse on the country road, owned by a black man, but with the backing of the white sheriff, so it was rumored. The music was loud and good.
He had showed up here with several buddies, a musician (a singer), a guy from the Air Force base, and a workmate, who had somehow brought them together, guys who liked to drink beer, listen to sounds, maybe share a reefer. They had wound up at the roadhouse as a matter of course, not like they were going out anywhere. There was a good feeling. Things were as they should be. The word for that in those days, they were all "mellow."
You could say the feeling in the SNCC office was mellow too, but with an edge to it, naturally. At the SNCC office they were planning all the time to break the law, the Jim Crow law. The kids were happy about it, even when they were in jail. Years later when recalling it, even bragging about it, they would dwell on the danger and the discomfort, all they had sacrificed. That was how older people remembered things from their youth that had turned out much better than expected. But at the roadhouse nothing in the way of protesting anything was planned, and for that matter President Johnson had recently signed the civil rights law.
At the roadhouse something unexpected occurred. They were not protesting anything, they were just dancing and "mellow." The roadhouse was owned by a black man and everybody there that night was black except one white guy who was dancing. Suddenly the white cops showed up and arrested him for disorderly conduct although he had only been dancing. He protested that the civil rights law had been passed, integration was now legal, and all he was doing was dancing. Later in jail the white southern guys suggested that he was just ignorant and had something to learn about "Southern ways," which did not countenance "mixin'."
What would stick in his mind for a long time afterward, more than anything else, was the looks on his friends' faces as he was being arrested and hauled off to jail. Particularly the Air Force guy. A look of regret in their faces. Powerful regret mixed with guilt and apology (to whom?). There was even a sick or injured feeling in their looks. These were black guys who felt bad about seeing their white friend being hauled away for dancing in a black night club. In those looks the white guy recognized the look that must have been in his own face often when seeing black friends beaten or arrested in the protests, or worse, just in the course of everyday life, beaten or hauled away for nothing.
How often over the course of history must friendly white people have suffered vicariously and shown their hurt and regret in their faces as black friends or even employees were hauled away to jail, or even to be lynched, a profound sorrow you could do nothing to help. Such a hurt perhaps was nothing against a lynching maybe. Still a strange and awful hurt and regret to be mirrored back and forth between victim and witness. In the roadhouse that night the historical roles were reversed, but the feelings of fear and regret were the same.