One hundred years ago Tuesday, 44 men reported to the New York Police Department's majestic old headquarters on Centre St. to be sworn in as rookies.
Only one was black - 6-foot-2, 240-pound Samuel Jesse Battle, who became Greater New York's first African-American cop.
NYPD Commissioner Rhinelander Waldo said he was glad to welcome a representative of the race to the 7,500-member force.
After the ceremony, Waldo told Battle privately: "You will have some difficulties, but I know you will overcome them."
Waldo was guilty of gross understatement. Battle waged a tough fight to just get that far. The determined racial hostility he was still to face would be much worse.
Face it, he did. Over four decades, he rose to become the NYPD's first black sergeant and lieutenant and an aide to Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. He ended his career as parole commissioner, succeeding Lou Gehrig in a post the Yankee hero held after baseball.
By then, Battle counted among his friends First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, boxing great Sugar Ray Robinson and tap-dance legend Bill (Bojangles) Robinson.
Who this extraordinary man was and how, against all odds, he overcame is one of New York's great untold stories.
Born in 1883 on the North Carolina coast, and weighing more than 16 pounds at birth, Battle was the son of freed slaves living in the small city of New Bern. They had in their youngest son a child given to mischief and brawling. As a result, Battle grew up under his father's whippings, lovingly administered and accepted.
In 1898, at 16, he set out for the North as an early pioneer of the Great Migration that would draw 6 million blacks from the South.
He left home with barely an eighth-grade education, but was blessed with high intelligence and the confidence that he was equal to the world.
He would never see his father again and would rarely feel his mother's embrace. Battle's journeys took him to odd jobs in Connecticut and then, in 1902, to New York, where it was both the Gilded Age and the dark tenement era.
Of the city's 3 million residents, 60,000 were black. Many were concentrated in the Tenderloin, a district of vice and police corruption on the West Side below 42nd St., and on San Juan Hill, a neighborhood roughly where Lincoln Center now stands.
Battle found work as a butler before becoming a luggage-handling Red Cap at Grand Central Depot, precursor to today's terminal.
With his outsized, winning personality, he became well-known to the rich and famous travelers who passed through the station.
Among those was President Teddy Roosevelt, a man black America admired for having made Booker T. Washington the first African-American to have dinner in the White House. Fellow Red Caps chose him to express their appreciation to the President while the cadre stood before Roosevelt at attention.
Living with Old Glory
As America's civil rights movement flickered to life with the creation in New York of the NAACP, Battle in 1910 hit upon the revolutionary idea of joining the New York City Police Department.
Twenty years earlier, when Brooklyn was an independent city, a group of blacks tried to integrate its force. Most were driven out by severe harassment. Those who hung on were relegated to stationhouse duties.
Breaking the Police Department's barrier would be more fearsome. The ranks were composed largely of Irish immigrants or their sons. Cops wore brass-buttoned coats, gray helmets and holstered revolvers. They used their nightsticks liberally.
Men walked beats, held fixed posts and slept in stationhouse dormitories to be on hand in case of emergencies.
Would-be cops studied for the hiring exam at the Delehanty civil service school. Barred from entry by virtue of skin color, Battle studied relentlessly on his own and scored high enough to warrant an appointment, but when he reported for the physical, a police surgeon diagnosed a disqualifying heart murmur.
Battle turned for help to Fred Moore, editor of the leading black-oriented newspaper, the New York Age, and Dr. E. P. Roberts, one of the city's few black physicians. They knew Roberts' opinion would carry little weight, so Battle found a top white doctor, who pronounced him in excellent health.
That and pressure from Moore and black activists led to Battle's swearing-in on June 28, 1911. He was 28 - the same age Jackie Robinson would be when he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers 36 years later.
As hard as it was to get on the force, Battle's ordeal would only get tougher. The department sent him to a precinct on W. 68th St. Officers refused to speak to him or sleep in the same room with a black man.
They banished Battle to a loft where the precinct stored its American flag - an irony not lost on him, given that he was a native American while many of his tormentors were immigrants.
In a 1960 interview with Columbia University's oral history project, Battle recalled:
"I used to say to myself: 'I'm here in an American stationhouse, I'm sleeping under the Stars and Stripes, and that's my protection; and my fellow officers are down in their quarters together, and some of them can't even speak our language."
The public flocked to ogle Battle as if he were an exotic zoo animal. He remembered: "When the sightseeing buses would come along, they would announce loudly to the people, 'Here's New York's first colored policeman.'"
Battle knew complaining would make things worse. As he approached the six-month mark, when probationary rookies were made permanent cops, his enemies grew bolder. Threatening letters arrived; he found a note, pierced like a bullet hole, over his flag-loft bed. The words said:
"N-----, if you don't quit, this is what will happen to you."
Finally, a white woman, friend to many cops, tried unsuccessfully to lure Battle into a late-night, career-ending sexual encounter in a secluded park.
Holding fast - and believing that through him the black race had been put on trial - Battle won full status. Only then did he confront his enemies:
"I said, 'I'm going down to the cellar, and I won't have anything but my fists. Come down one by one. If you're not able to go back up, after a certain length of time send another one down. Anything that you have against me, take it out on my black behind.'"
No one dared. They had seen how powerfully Battle used brawn and nightstick to enforce the law. His courage and strength proved decisive.
The breakthrough came in Harlem around 2 a.m. on a September morning in 1919.
Hero of the 'Straw Hat Riot'
A white police officer named Amanda Hayes was on his way home. As he descended into the subway at Lenox Ave. and 135th St. a young black man grabbed Hayes' straw hat, a common prank after Labor Day. Hayes tried to arrest the man, but a crowd swarmed him. He killed the man with two shots and the "Straw Hat Riot" was underway.
Battle, stationed in Harlem, raced to the scene. He found Hayes on the ground surrounded by a black mob, broke through the crowd and stood over the fallen officer to hold off attacks.
Word spread that a black cop had saved a white cop from rampaging blacks. Battle, who always knew being a good cop would never be enough, had become a great cop.
Soon, white officers voted to admit him to a class studying for the sergeant's exam at the Delehanty school.
Battle aced the test, but the "difficulties" Waldo predicted were far from over.
He would be banished to Canarsie for displeasing a black nightclub kingpin who paid for police protection. And he would be denied advancement by a corrupt and racist commissioner.
With LaGuardia's coming and the installation of the legendary Lewis Valentine to lead the NYPD, Battle finally got a fair shot. He served with distinction and proved invaluable to the mayor when rioting broke out in Harlem in 1935 and 1943.
Finally, LaGuardia named Battle to the parole commission. He served until retiring in 1950.
By then, he had been followed into the NYPD by 576 blacks, including 70 detectives, five sergeants, eight lieutenants and one acting captain. Seven had been killed in the line of duty.
He and his wife, Florence Carrington, a young woman who had come north from Virginia, were married for 61 years.
They had five children, three of whom survived the astronomical infant mortality of the early 20th Century, and they bought a townhouse on Striver's Row, 255 W. 138th St., placing Battle at the heart of the Harlem Renaissance.
He knew all the big figures and they knew him. He built a lasting connection with Mrs. Roosevelt after meeting her as a lieutenant when she visited the community.
In 1966, the newspapers recorded the death of Samuel Jesse Battle, age 81, and the son of freed slaves who had taken Badge 782 on June 28, 1911, to become a seminal figure in city history. But he soon faded from the collective memory.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2011/06/26/2011-06-26_breaking_the_blue_color_barrier.html#ixzz1QUN7eNg1
Only one was black - 6-foot-2, 240-pound Samuel Jesse Battle, who became Greater New York's first African-American cop.
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| Samuel Jesse Battle |
NYPD Commissioner Rhinelander Waldo said he was glad to welcome a representative of the race to the 7,500-member force.
After the ceremony, Waldo told Battle privately: "You will have some difficulties, but I know you will overcome them."
Waldo was guilty of gross understatement. Battle waged a tough fight to just get that far. The determined racial hostility he was still to face would be much worse.
Face it, he did. Over four decades, he rose to become the NYPD's first black sergeant and lieutenant and an aide to Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. He ended his career as parole commissioner, succeeding Lou Gehrig in a post the Yankee hero held after baseball.
By then, Battle counted among his friends First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, boxing great Sugar Ray Robinson and tap-dance legend Bill (Bojangles) Robinson.
Who this extraordinary man was and how, against all odds, he overcame is one of New York's great untold stories.
Born in 1883 on the North Carolina coast, and weighing more than 16 pounds at birth, Battle was the son of freed slaves living in the small city of New Bern. They had in their youngest son a child given to mischief and brawling. As a result, Battle grew up under his father's whippings, lovingly administered and accepted.
In 1898, at 16, he set out for the North as an early pioneer of the Great Migration that would draw 6 million blacks from the South.
He left home with barely an eighth-grade education, but was blessed with high intelligence and the confidence that he was equal to the world.
He would never see his father again and would rarely feel his mother's embrace. Battle's journeys took him to odd jobs in Connecticut and then, in 1902, to New York, where it was both the Gilded Age and the dark tenement era.
Of the city's 3 million residents, 60,000 were black. Many were concentrated in the Tenderloin, a district of vice and police corruption on the West Side below 42nd St., and on San Juan Hill, a neighborhood roughly where Lincoln Center now stands.
Battle found work as a butler before becoming a luggage-handling Red Cap at Grand Central Depot, precursor to today's terminal.
With his outsized, winning personality, he became well-known to the rich and famous travelers who passed through the station.
Among those was President Teddy Roosevelt, a man black America admired for having made Booker T. Washington the first African-American to have dinner in the White House. Fellow Red Caps chose him to express their appreciation to the President while the cadre stood before Roosevelt at attention.
Living with Old Glory
As America's civil rights movement flickered to life with the creation in New York of the NAACP, Battle in 1910 hit upon the revolutionary idea of joining the New York City Police Department.
Twenty years earlier, when Brooklyn was an independent city, a group of blacks tried to integrate its force. Most were driven out by severe harassment. Those who hung on were relegated to stationhouse duties.
Breaking the Police Department's barrier would be more fearsome. The ranks were composed largely of Irish immigrants or their sons. Cops wore brass-buttoned coats, gray helmets and holstered revolvers. They used their nightsticks liberally.
Men walked beats, held fixed posts and slept in stationhouse dormitories to be on hand in case of emergencies.
Would-be cops studied for the hiring exam at the Delehanty civil service school. Barred from entry by virtue of skin color, Battle studied relentlessly on his own and scored high enough to warrant an appointment, but when he reported for the physical, a police surgeon diagnosed a disqualifying heart murmur.
Battle turned for help to Fred Moore, editor of the leading black-oriented newspaper, the New York Age, and Dr. E. P. Roberts, one of the city's few black physicians. They knew Roberts' opinion would carry little weight, so Battle found a top white doctor, who pronounced him in excellent health.
That and pressure from Moore and black activists led to Battle's swearing-in on June 28, 1911. He was 28 - the same age Jackie Robinson would be when he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers 36 years later.
As hard as it was to get on the force, Battle's ordeal would only get tougher. The department sent him to a precinct on W. 68th St. Officers refused to speak to him or sleep in the same room with a black man.
They banished Battle to a loft where the precinct stored its American flag - an irony not lost on him, given that he was a native American while many of his tormentors were immigrants.
In a 1960 interview with Columbia University's oral history project, Battle recalled:
"I used to say to myself: 'I'm here in an American stationhouse, I'm sleeping under the Stars and Stripes, and that's my protection; and my fellow officers are down in their quarters together, and some of them can't even speak our language."
The public flocked to ogle Battle as if he were an exotic zoo animal. He remembered: "When the sightseeing buses would come along, they would announce loudly to the people, 'Here's New York's first colored policeman.'"
Battle knew complaining would make things worse. As he approached the six-month mark, when probationary rookies were made permanent cops, his enemies grew bolder. Threatening letters arrived; he found a note, pierced like a bullet hole, over his flag-loft bed. The words said:
"N-----, if you don't quit, this is what will happen to you."
Finally, a white woman, friend to many cops, tried unsuccessfully to lure Battle into a late-night, career-ending sexual encounter in a secluded park.
Holding fast - and believing that through him the black race had been put on trial - Battle won full status. Only then did he confront his enemies:
"I said, 'I'm going down to the cellar, and I won't have anything but my fists. Come down one by one. If you're not able to go back up, after a certain length of time send another one down. Anything that you have against me, take it out on my black behind.'"
No one dared. They had seen how powerfully Battle used brawn and nightstick to enforce the law. His courage and strength proved decisive.
The breakthrough came in Harlem around 2 a.m. on a September morning in 1919.
Hero of the 'Straw Hat Riot'
A white police officer named Amanda Hayes was on his way home. As he descended into the subway at Lenox Ave. and 135th St. a young black man grabbed Hayes' straw hat, a common prank after Labor Day. Hayes tried to arrest the man, but a crowd swarmed him. He killed the man with two shots and the "Straw Hat Riot" was underway.
Battle, stationed in Harlem, raced to the scene. He found Hayes on the ground surrounded by a black mob, broke through the crowd and stood over the fallen officer to hold off attacks.
Word spread that a black cop had saved a white cop from rampaging blacks. Battle, who always knew being a good cop would never be enough, had become a great cop.
Soon, white officers voted to admit him to a class studying for the sergeant's exam at the Delehanty school.
Battle aced the test, but the "difficulties" Waldo predicted were far from over.
He would be banished to Canarsie for displeasing a black nightclub kingpin who paid for police protection. And he would be denied advancement by a corrupt and racist commissioner.
With LaGuardia's coming and the installation of the legendary Lewis Valentine to lead the NYPD, Battle finally got a fair shot. He served with distinction and proved invaluable to the mayor when rioting broke out in Harlem in 1935 and 1943.
Finally, LaGuardia named Battle to the parole commission. He served until retiring in 1950.
By then, he had been followed into the NYPD by 576 blacks, including 70 detectives, five sergeants, eight lieutenants and one acting captain. Seven had been killed in the line of duty.
He and his wife, Florence Carrington, a young woman who had come north from Virginia, were married for 61 years.
They had five children, three of whom survived the astronomical infant mortality of the early 20th Century, and they bought a townhouse on Striver's Row, 255 W. 138th St., placing Battle at the heart of the Harlem Renaissance.
He knew all the big figures and they knew him. He built a lasting connection with Mrs. Roosevelt after meeting her as a lieutenant when she visited the community.
In 1966, the newspapers recorded the death of Samuel Jesse Battle, age 81, and the son of freed slaves who had taken Badge 782 on June 28, 1911, to become a seminal figure in city history. But he soon faded from the collective memory.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2011/06/26/2011-06-26_breaking_the_blue_color_barrier.html#ixzz1QUN7eNg1
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