Resting Place (1986)

In 1972, Major Kendall Laird as a Survivors Assistance officer, is charged with helping the families of soldiers killed in action for as long as he may be needed. He is escorting the remains of Dwight Johnson, an Army Lieutenant, for delivering them to his parents Luther and Ada at Rockville, Georgia, which he estimates will be a short duty, and one in which he will have nothing really helpful to do. The funeral is prevented from taking place because, despite desegregation being legally in effect since years ago, the town still is deeply segregationist, and its authorities refuse the deceased to be interred in the local “for caucasians only” cemetery. They propose Lt. Johnson’s burial to take place in the cemetery for Blacks located in the outskirts of the town, notwithstanding his unit has recommended him for the Silver Star.

The Lieutenant’s parents refuse to give in, and they are willing to have his son’s body kept in their church’s safeguard until the town and cemetery’s authorities change their minds. Major Laird searches for a way to break the impasse with the help of Eudora McCallister, the lady who sold the Johnsons a plot of her property in the cemetery, and the local newspaper’s editor Sam Jennings. This one suggests that telling the Lieutenant’s story would effect a change, so the Major starts an informal quest for biographical data.