Years after racial strife in Rock Hill, 2 whites apologize to 5 blacks
Next to a lunch counter that was segregated for so long sat a table of two white people and five black people
The conversation quickly took the group back to Jan. 31, 1961.
Elwin Wilson, one of those white men, had come that day to that very lunch counter four steps from where he was now, wanting to pull one of those black men off of the stool he was sitting on. He wanted to give a beating.
Coleman, had been just outside, among so many, wanting to scream racial epithets. But 48 years later, Wilson, now 72, and Coleman, in his mid-60s, wanted something entirely different from these five black people.
They wanted forgiveness.
These black men and women -- just a few of the folks known as the "Friendship Nine" and the "City Girls" -- have been honored in museums.
They have been apologized to by politicians.
But never before had any of the white men from that day in 1961 asked to meet any of them, and sit down with them where it all started and apologize for hating them.
So, David Williamson and Willie McCleod, Phyllis Hyatt and Elsie Springs, and for sure Patricia Sims, didn't skip a beat to forgive.
Williamson said words that he and the other men and women protesters have said for decades.
"We accept your apology," Williamson said. "We forgave everybody a long time ago."
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