Jackson Free Press

If you were to walk down the 300 block of Farish Street today you would find a Federal Building, a few reserved parking spots and possibly a couple of state officials with top-secret information in their briefcases. Forty years earlier, in 1963, you would have found 10-year-old Robert Graham—now Lt. Robert Graham, police department spokesman—shining shoes at his father's shine shop. It was also in 1963 when Mayor Allen Thompson swore into office James Earl Johnson, Ellis Sonny Weathersby Jr., Joe Louis Land, Levaughn Carter, Charlie Corley and William Carter—Jackson's first African-American policemen (then called "colored officers"). Due to the strict order that all officers be dressed appropriately and clean at all times, plus the fact the African-American officers could only patrol Lynch and Farish streets, young Graham had the opportunity to shine all six of these officer's shoes on a regular basis.

"They were revered to the point that everyone wanted to know them. They were also feared to the point that many blacks were afraid to even walk on the same side of the street," Graham said last week. But that was a different time in America, socially and racially. It was a time when the biggest neighborhood disturbance was the local alcoholic on the corner. And it was a time when the slate of six African-American police officers was a phenomenal achievement for the community they served. These officers were placed on different shifts than white officers, could not attend roll call with the other police, and were instructed to call for a white officer when apprehending a white subject. They weren't given patrol cars until almost a decade later. The routine group showers were discontinued after they were hired.

Respect was something the officers had to fight for daily, even among other African-Americans. "It was like a badge of honor for a black to resist their arrest. There was pride in saying Charlie tried to take me to jail, and I fought him," Graham added.

And many Jacksonians like Graham feel that these pioneers still have not received public recognition for the hardships they endured. For this reason, the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE) and Police Chief Robert Moore hosted a reception on June 28, 2003, at the Smith Robertson Museum to honor the first African-American Jackson police officers. The chief unveiled a portrait of the six officers taken in 1963, just after they set a precedent for the many African-American officers, deputies, lieutenants and chiefs to come.

"They paved the way for me to be standing here today," Moore, the city's fifth African-American police chief, said of the six men at his June 25 press briefing. He also held up a copy of the book "Weary Feet, Rested Souls: A Guided History to the Civil Rights Movement" by Townsend Davis (W.W. Norton & Co., 1998) and suggested that the reporters present read the book. It contains a detailed history of Jackson during the tumultuous '60s, including a description of slain hero Medgar Evers' funeral. On June 15, 1963, mourners packed Farish Street following the white hearse carrying Evers as it made its way toward the Masonic Temple on Lynch Street in 101-degree heat. Townsend writes that as the casket passed by a line of police officers, "some removed their blue riot helmets." He did not say whether the officers were black or white. Today, Graham reports, 70 percent of JPD officers are black.