Rock Hill retired cop who apologized for racism speaks against white supremacists

The retired cop uses a walker now, not the signature motorcycle that was his brand for three decades on the job in Rock Hill.

Steve Coleman, 73, sat on his porch, near a bedroom where a photo of police officer Bill Singleton remains on the wall, 49 years after Singleton was shot and killed on duty.

“Bill Singleton was a black man, and he was my best friend,” Coleman said. “Bill Singleton gave his life for me. I would have given mine for him.”

Coleman was the Rock Hill police officer in 1968 who had to tell Singleton’s family of his death.

Coleman has watched and read about Charlottesville, Va., the Ku Klux Klan, the Nazi sympathizers and racial hatred in America.

“Racism is sick and it is wrong,” Coleman said. “Hating people for their color is wrong. I oughta know.”

Coleman said he had that hatred himself, as a teen and as a young man in Rock Hill, before he was a cop. It gnawed at him for decades, even when his best friend was black, and he had grandchildren who are black.

As a young man, Coleman said every bad word he could think of to black people protesting segregation. Then he became a cop.

“Those black officers I worked with, they loved me,” Coleman said. “I found out I loved them too. I found myself.”

Eight years ago, Coleman made national news when he apologized to black people in Rock Hill who he had once taunted. He sees white supremacists on his television. He sees protesters hurt and one killed.

“I don’t like it one damn bit,” Coleman said. “People who hate and want to fight and shoot those they hate, I got no use for them. The country should have no use for them.”

Coleman, who retired in 1998 after 33 years as a Rock Hill officer, was asked what he would tell Nazis if he saw any. His answer came with lightning speed: “Go to hell,” Coleman said.

After reading a January 2009 column on the inauguration of Barack Obama, and the heroic Rock Hill black people of the 1960s who marched and protested and went to jail for equality to help change America, Coleman called me in 2009. He said he wanted to apologize to those people for being a racist when he was young.

Coleman remembers skipping class at Rock Hill High School in 1961 to hurl racial insults at protesters in Rock Hill. Coleman lived with that shame until 2009, when he saw those protesters as senior citizens in the newspaper.

He could bear it no more. He publicly apologized.

Coleman’s apology, and that of another former racist two days later in The Herald, became an international story of remorse and forgiveness.

A former Rock Hill Ku Klux Klan member, the late Elwin Wilson, also called me the same week in 2009 and asked to apologize to those black people for beatings and racial taunts and hate. Wilson and Coleman together apologized downtown, where the protests happened in 1961.

The black protesters said in 2009 not only were both forgiven, but that they had been forgiven decades ago. One of the protesters who offered forgiveness was U.S. Rep. John Lewis of Georgia, who Wilson beat up in 1961 when Lewis was a Freedom Rider and was beaten in Rock Hill at a bus station.

Racial hatred must be addressed in America, Coleman said.

He said hatred of black and Jewish people hurts him the most.

“There is no place in this country for hate,” Coleman said. “Millions died fighting the Nazis.”

Coleman’s courage as one of two people to seek and receive forgiveness for racism, part of a culture long ago, won’t be forgotten. He said the violence in Virginia also must not be forgotten.

“We all must have the courage to change and be better people,” Coleman said. “Racism is wrong. The world has changed. Get over it.”

This story was originally published August 21, 2017 at 4:13 PM with the headline "Rock Hill retired cop who apologized for racism speaks against white supremacists."