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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - VI. Justice - 25. The Police and Other Public Contacts - 3. The Policeman in the Negro Neighborhood
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Chapter 25. The Police and Other Public Contacts 543
sheriffs, constables, probation and truant officers in public service in the
United States. Only 7 per cent were in the South outside the Border states.
When the Border states and the District of Columbia are included in the
South, the percentage rises to 18.^® Apparently there was little increase, if
any, between 1930 and 1940 in the South.* The reluctance to appoint
Negro policemen in the South is reflected also in the restrictions put upon
the authority of the few there are.** It is reported that the use of Negro
police seems to be a factor making for a lowering of the crime rate in the
Negro community. ^They can arrest offenders with less show of force,
partly because they know their way around in the community, and partly
because they are personally respected.”
•
“The geographic distribution of Negro policemen is in inverse relation to the percentage
of Negroes in the total population. Mississippi, South Carolina, Louisiana, Georgia and
Alabama—the only states with more than one-third Negro population—have not one Negro
policeman in them, though they have nearly two-fifths of the total Negro population
of the nation. Other states without regular Negro ofiicers are Arkansas and Virginia, both
with more than one-fourth of their population Negroes. Only two states with more than one-
fourth Negro population have Negro policemen—North Carolina with one at Princeville, a
Negro suburb of Tarboro, and Florida with three at Daytona Beach and one each at
Fort Myers and Sarasota. In these states there is one Negro policeman to every 200,000
Negroes.
“In Maryland, Delaware, Tennessee and Texas, where Negroes make up from 10 per cent
to 20 per cent of the population there are 39 Negro officers, or one to every 41,000 Negroes 5
while in the five states with from 5 per cent to 10 per cent of the population Negro, there
are 165, or one to every 5,700 Negroes. In the remaining 32 states where the Negro
accounts for less than 5 per cent of the total population, there are 756 policemen, or one
to every 41,000 Negroes.
“The figures above do not include the District of Columbia, which seems to contradict
the general pattern. It has 34 Negro policemen, one to every 3,800 Negroes. But the
District, with 27 per cent Negroes in 1930, is very deep South in some respects, particularly
in its record of police killings of Negroes.
“Excepting the District of Columbia, the South with slightly over three-fourths of the
nation’s Negro population has less than one-eighth of the nation’s Negro policemen, while
the North with one-fifth of the Negro population has four-fifths of the policemen, and the
West with one per cent of the population has over 5 per cent of the Negro policemen.”
(Jbid,y pp. 24-25.)
The figures are as of 1940. One subsidiary reason why the South is hesitant about appoint-
ing Negroes as police officers is that, as a rule, they receive the same pay as the white
officers. {Ibid,y p. 27.)
*“The province of authority of the Negro policeman varies with his location on the
map. In most of the Northern and Western communities Negro policemen function as officers
in any part of town, even though their special duties may often be more or less limited
to the Negro section. Farther down the map, the Negro officers are restricted to Negro
communities, while in most of the lower border cities with Negro policemen, their authority
applies only to Negroes in the Negro section. When offending whites need to be arrested
white officers are called in. It was with some feeling of victory that the Negroes in Louis-
vUle, a decade ago, won the right for Negro oflBcers to go home in their uniforms as did
the white police officers.” (Ibid,, p. afi.)
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