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Footnotes 1341
ignored. And so on until the desired number of appointments have been made. The only
circumstances under which the highest ranking applicant would necessarily be appointed
is for all eligible persons on the list to be appointed.”® It is understood that Negroes
cannot apply for police positions.
Ibid,y p. 14. ‘‘Where the police department is directly under the city adminis-
tration, that is, ‘in politics,’ each political faction has its own list of prospective officers,
who work in the campaign on promise of a job if successful at the polls. But this does
not mean that the particular person who becomes a policeman took an interest in the
election; he may have been sponsored by a politically potent father, uncle, lodge buddy,
or perhaps a former employer. Under such a system, victory for the contesting political
party may mean the dismissal of half or more of the force,”**
Ibid.
y
p. 15.
Ibid.
y
p. 14.
Ibid.y p. 16.
Ibid.y pp. 19 and 20.
Ibid.y p. 20.
^^Ibid.y p. 21.
“The fact that Negroes are used unofficially by the police force seems to contribute
to the high homicide rate among Negroes, simply because the lives of the Negro
informers, spotters, and stool pigeons are cheap to the Negroes who are wanted by the
police and who are being reported, often as not, by fellow criminals trying to protect
their own skins. The law is white. So too are the officials who administer it. The Negro
who works with the police becomes a party to the ‘crime’ of subjecting a member of his
group to an unfriendly court. He is by definition of the hunted man, a traitor to his
own race—and his life may be the price.”®
’The hardships of the white policeman should not be forgotten when accounting
for his intense race prejudice. When he patrols the Negro sections of Southern cities,
he is in considerable danger of personal violence and knows it. Dr. Raper describes the
daily routine as follows:
“Police service to Negro communities is limited largely to radio cruising cars. A map
of their routes through Atlanta’s Negro sections, however, shows that they do not go
through the areas where most Negro homicides occur, but rather stay on the main
thoroughfares which are given over largely to business purposes. Too often the police
go into the Negro community only when called, as it were, to umpire Negro brawls,
or even more often to pick up members of the ‘enemy’ faction. When poolroom oper-
ators or restaurant keepers are unsympathetic with boisterousness, the whole group may
be taken off together in ‘Black Maria.’ Managements do not, as a rule, follow such a
practice, however, for to do so would be to go out of business shortly.
“The real function served by the police in many Southern Negro communities seems
to be limited to rounding up vagrants, loiterers, crap shooters, non-cooperating prosti-
tutes, and drunks. These occasional arresting excursions serve several purposes: they
keep the Negroes intimidated, they maintain arrest quotas, they earn money for the
police court, and sometimes they help preserve order. For, as pointed out by more than
one police official, most of the Negro killings grow out of these social gatherings.
• Raper, op. cit.y p. 1 7.
^ Ihid.y p. 16.
^ Ibid.
y
pp. 21-22.
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