I'd assumed this practice was a manifestation of military decorum.
I suspect that he was acknowledging these strangers as veterans of a kind, participants in an unnamed American war in which he and they had long served, were serving still.
The perception of Black people at that time was marred by stereotypes of indolence, cowardice, and ineptitude, which had been seared into the American imagination by racist films, folktales, minstrel shows, and other sinister mythologies.
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