James Bowers said he should have known better. He said he should have known not to walk alone at 11 p.m. a few blocks from campus to get a sandwich at a nearby restaurant.

So when a group of guys gave him a scornful look and waited outside the restaurant for him to leave, Bowers knew what was happening.

After all, this was Columbia, S.C., in the mid-1960s and Bowers was in the heat of the civil rights movement as one of the first black students at the recently desegregated University of South Carolina.

Bowers was a few years away from completing law school and several years from becoming a distinguished lawyer. Today, he's one of Day Pitney's key corporate compliance attorneys. Back then, he was an undergrad student worried about getting back safely to his dorm room.

"I said to myself, 'There's no way I'm leaving this place until those guys disperse,'" the 62-year-old Bowers recalled last week in his Hartford, Conn., office. "The restaurant owner knew what was happening and he let me stay. I waited around an hour for those guys to leave. That made me re-think going out alone at night off campus."

Bowers said it was the sort of racial tension he had seen most of his life growing up in the segregated South in Orangeburg, S.C. That environment stoked his interest in the law as a youngster.

"There were several civil rights lawyers in the community, and what they did fascinated me," Bowers said. "I thought being a lawyer was a way to bring about social change."

After navigating the tumultuous civil rights era as a student, Bowers launched a professional career that has been marked by great achievements.

Following his graduation from South Carolina, Bowers was accepted into Harvard Law School. After he earned his law degree, he returned to the University of South Carolina in 1973 to become the school's first black law professor, teaching for three years.

"That was one of the most meaningful and rewarding things I've done," said Bowers, who more recently has taught at Yale and University of Connecticut law schools.

'HANDS ON PULSE'

But he was itching to get into the practice of law, so he called on one of his former Harvard professors, Roderick Hills, who had become general counsel for the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Bowers became a senior attorney in Hills' office, a position that honed his skills for his next professional step to Aetna, where he worked for 25 years and became vice president of corporate compliance. He joined Day Pitney in 2004, and he currently holds an of counsel position.

He works with companies in several industries, including insurance, energy, banking and transportation to make sure they are abiding by current regulatory laws.

"Securities law is an area that is quite busy at the moment" with the government scrutinizing how financial institutions operate, Bowers said. "I like having my hands on that pulse. Securities law is the backbone of our entire economic system."

When considering what type of law he wanted to practice, Bowers said he decided against civil rights work because nearly every minority lawyer he knew was going that direction. Corporate America, however, was a place that had very few people of color in its ranks.

"I felt like I was going to crack corporate America," Bowers said. "I felt I could do more within the institution than challenging the institution."

Bowers said his late mother played a major role in shaping his and his two brothers' philosophies. As a teacher in a family of educators and ministers, she stressed the importance of education and for fighting for one's beliefs, Bowers said.

For Bowers, that's meant creating racial harmony and breaking down stereotypes through his legal work and teaching. He said that in his professional career, he's never felt like he was treated unfairly because of his skin color.

"My mother taught us never to be bitter about the impact of segregation because things will change," Bowers said. "I've always tried to find situations where I could open up people's thinking."