My editor in 2005 asked me to research and write about the history of black officers in the Springfield Police Department. The assignment stemmed from ongoing claims of racial discrimination and bias within the department and the civil lawsuits stemming from those allegations.
I spent no less than six months researching the topic. I pored through reels of microfilm of old city newspapers, picked up books on the history of the city, spent hours at the Sangamon Valley Collection and interviewed several retired and current black officers.
Black and Blue / African-American officers struggling with racial divisions in the Springfield Police Department is nothing new.
Sept. 4, 2005Ask Harry Draper about his 25 years with the Springfield Police Department, and he’ll regale you for hours with tales of solved murder cases, department politics and officer shenanigans.
He’ll reach into his front pants pocket and show you the badge he still carries around, even though he’s been retired since 1981.
His eyes get a little misty when he recalls the day in 1963 when he was the only black officer chosen to guard Martin Luther King Jr., who spoke at an AFL-CIO convention at the Illinois State Armory.
But not all of Draper’s memories are fond ones. When he joined the police force, even though the modern civil rights movement was gaining momentum, racism was overt and accepted among Springfield officers. Many black officers agree that the discrimination they experienced was far worse among their colleagues than anything they came across in the community.
At one time, black officers patrolled only in black areas of town and on the old “Levee,” the city’s red-light district downtown, and they did so on foot. Black detectives worked only on cases involving black suspects or victims. Promotions were few and far between.
“I don’t want you to think I’m bitter in any way in what I tell you,” said Draper, 73. “I loved Dr. Martin Luther King. One of the things he said is ‘I have to stick with love because hate is too big of a burden to bear.’”
Don Schluter, 60, became a Springfield police officer in 1966 and retired as a sergeant in 1997. (He spent another six years as a civilian police employee.) When he was young, he said, he wasn’t aware that the department had any kind of reputation for racism. But once he became a police officer, he realized some department policies appeared to be rooted in prejudice.
He harbors no hard feelings, though.
“I’m a firm believer that if you do the right thing at the right time for the right reason, good things will come to you. I have better things to do than try to get even,” he said.
The city of Springfield has had black police officers for at least 120 years. For most of that time – with the notable exception of the administration of Mayor Nelson Howarth and Police Chief Silver Suarez in the 1950s and ’60s – officers and city leaders have struggled to find answers to racial divisions within the department.
***
The Springfield Police Department was established in 1834, when the city’s board of trustees hired a constable to patrol the streets. African-Americans had been living in the city as early as 1819, according to research by Springfield historian Dick Hart. The 1830 census showed nine “slaves” and 10 “free colored” people in Springfield. From 1850 on, the census did not distinguish between free blacks and slaves, but Hart’s research indicates it is possible some slaves continued to be held in Springfield up to the start of the Civil War in 1861.
There is no official record of when the first black city police officer was hired. The police department does not maintain a history itself, and there is no official department historian.
However, old city directories at The State Journal-Register show one black officer, Henry Vantrece, on the 15-man force in 1884, the earliest year in the newspaper’s collection. (City directories at the time listed residents’ names, addresses and professions and included a notation of “colored,” or “col,” next to entries for African-Americans.)
Little is known about Vantrece. He also appears in the 1886 city directory as an officer, but those appear to be the only years he served on the force. A 1904-1905 directory lists him as a Springfield firefighter. In other directories, he is listed as a laborer or janitor.
Wyatt Johnson is listed as the only black officer in 1887 and 1888. By 1891, the directory shows, the city had 26 patrolmen, including two blacks: William Jones and L.F. Todd.
The 1892 “Souvenir of Springfield,” a supplement to the Illinois State Journal newspaper, indicates the police department had 28 patrolmen, three of whom – Jones, Todd and Henry King – were black. The book indicates that during the year ending April 30, 1892, Springfield police made 3,344 arrests, and the patrol wagon had traveled 8,139 blocks.
Other early black police officers, based on city directory information, included: James P. Loomis and Theodore Newman (1900-1901); Charles Waters (1902-1903); Harry Taylor, Abe L. Morgan and J. Thornton Morrison (1904-1905); Harry Taylor, C.M. Davis, George Beard, J. Thornton Morrison and Henry McCullough (1905); and John D. Gray and James P. Loomis (1909). Taylor, Morgan, Davis and Beard were listed as detectives. The others were identified as patrolmen. Amos Duncan and Albert C. Burton joined the force in 1915.
According to the 1990 book “The Sociogenesis of a Race Riot” by Roberta Senechal, political parties often courted black votes by offering city jobs, such as janitor, turnkey at the city jail, dogcatcher and police officer, as rewards. By 1907, she noted, four – or nearly 10 percent – of Springfield’s officers were black. The fire department also had an all-black engine company.
On Aug. 14, 1908, two days of race rioting broke out in Springfield after a crowd of angry white residents demanded that two black prisoners in the Sangamon County Jail – one accused of raping a white woman, the other accused of murder – be handed over. Upon learning they had been secreted away, the mob took to the streets. The Illinois National Guard was brought in the next day.
By the time the riot was over, two black men had been lynched, the city’s black business district was gutted, and several blocks of black homes were destroyed. Four white men died from stray bullets, and a 3-week-old African-American baby died of exposure after its family fled town.
A follow-up article in the Aug. 18, 1908, Illinois State Journal mentions a former Springfield police officer, a black man named Link Morgan – believed to be Abe L. Morgan – who authorities said had asked other black men to go with him to Springfield to cause trouble.
“Morgan is known in police circles, where he figured on a number of occasions. He formerly resided in the northeast part of the city and left Springfield a year ago,” the article reads. “Morgan was appointed on the police force by Former Mayor Devereaux and served a short time, when he was allowed to resign. He was implicated in a shooting affray on the levee which cost a life. After an investigation Morgan was exonerated and went to Peoria, where he has lived since.”
In the years following the riot, the number of black police officers declined dramatically, partly because a switch in 1911 from ward-based city government to the commission form diminished blacks’ political influence.
Research shows no black patrolmen or detectives on the city force between 1911 and 1914. Between 1915 and 1918, two to three black detectives were employed, and it was not until 1919 that Springfield again had a black patrolman.
Both the Springfield Police Department and The State Journal-Register have reported that Noah Roll, an officer who was killed in the line of duty in 1917, was black. However, that can’t be confirmed, and his family has disputed the assertion. Roll is listed in city directories of the time as a police officer, but without the customary “col” designation for African-Americans. Roll was shot in the head during a riot that erupted during a streetcar company strike in July 1917.
An Illinois State Journal article on July 21, 1918, profiled numerous black Springfield residents, including Taylor, Duncan, James Edward Hagan and John Cole.
Taylor at the time was the oldest black officer in Springfield.
“During a jail delivery he put up a fight against three desperate criminals in the jail lobby, was overpowered and locked up by the prisoners who escaped. Mr. Taylor released himself and, with Policeman Evan Jones, recaptured two of the prisoners,” the profile reads.
Taylor went on to become the city’s first black detective. The profile indicates Taylor and Duncan handled the “well-known Smith murder case” from beginning to end.
Duncan joined the police force in his 30s, and “his record for number and nature of arrests stands as well as that of any man on the force,” according to his profile. “He has handled some of the toughest men and some of the most intricate cases in the city’s history, sending 11 men to the penitentiary, besides many arrests for minor offenses.”
Duncan eventually became one of Springfield’s most prominent black residents. He and his wife, Eva, lived on North 15th Street in “a beautiful cottage, richly and tastefully furnished.” Duncan owned Dreamland amusement park and ran the all-black Pekin Theatre. He also was the first African-American to serve as a Sangamon County sheriff’s deputy, according to newspaper records.
Hagan was listed in city directories as a patrolman and detective from 1919 until 1928. City directories show Cole was a patrolman at various times from 1919 until 1928.
Thomas Theodore Newman, a member of the force in 1900 and 1901, is one of the more mysterious officers. Known to his friends in Springfield as “Tom” Newman, he apparently had another, more regal title: Prince Theodore Menelik, grandson of Menelik II, the king of Abyssinia in Africa from 1889 to 1913.
Newman died in July 1927 of injuries he received in a coalmine accident. According to articles at the time of his death, he was born in England in 1867. His father was captured by the British army and made a slave. His mother, an Abyssinian princess, took him to Africa when he was a baby. Political foes sent him to the United States when he was 14 years old. He moved to Springfield in 1882, married and became a laborer and later a police officer.
He made his background known in 1922 during a visit to Lincoln’s Tomb with a Kentucky friend, signing the guest book as “Prince Theodore Menelik.”
“Even while he traveled a beat in various parts of the city, his friends were aware that he could have been, under his title, king of his native land,” reads an article in the Journal. “In his earlier life he expressed a desire to return to his native land, but in later years said America was good enough for him.”
***
One of the earliest documented signs of racism within the ranks of the Springfield Police Department came in 1924, when a white officer, Gordon Swettart, was shot to death in a dispute with five men near Virden. Swettart was a member of the Ku Klux Klan and was buried in Oak Ridge Cemetery wearing a Klan robe over his police uniform, according to accounts from the time.
“Six of the klansmen were pallbearers and six marched back of the casket carrying a large red cross of carnations,” reads a Feb. 6, 1924, newspaper article. “A platoon of Springfield police … formed the guard of honor. In addition, all members of the police force, with the exception of the men actually on duty, were present at the services.”
Sometime in the 1920s, the police department stopped issuing uniforms to black officers, a policy that continued for about 20 years. A three-paragraph newspaper article from March 21, 1944, provides little insight into what prompted the change in policy.
“Two Negro detectives on the city police force have donned police uniforms and will be on duty regularly each evening in the Negro district, it was announced last night at police headquarters. The officers are Detective Sgts. Alexis Bender and Harlan Watson,” the article reads. “Police officials said last night that this was the first time in more than 20 years that the city had had Negro policemen in uniform.”
Watson was known in the black community as the first black officer to arrest a white man in Springfield. It happened at a tavern in the Levee. Draper, only a child at the time, remembers hearing the story.
“There was a fight, and Watson went in to try to break it up. This one white fella said, ‘No nigger’s going to arrest me,’” Draper said. “Watson proceeded to knock him on his rear end and take him to jail.
“It was the talk of the black community. Every black knew that Harlan Watson was the first one to arrest a white man.”
Watson, who joined the force in August 1942, retired in September 1969.
Virgil Harvell, who came to be one of the department’s most respected officers, joined the force in 1943, when he was about 26, according to his daughters Diane Harvell and Janice Whitt.
He became the department’s first black sergeant in 1956. That same year, he and his partner, Alvin Kirk, another black detective, won the department’s first Herndon Award for an investigation that freed an innocent man accused of rape and convicted the real rapist.
Harvell earned a perfect score on the lieutenant’s exam in 1962 and eventually was named chief of detectives.
Diane Harvell said her dad was a police officer 24 hours a day.
“He was very caring and compassionate. There were times when people came to the door and wanted him to solve some situation in the street or down the block. He was always on duty,” she said.
Harvell also was a mentor to younger black officers.
“Dad would have a big thing on his birthday every year. They would file in and out all day long,” Diane Harvell recalled. “They really looked up to him. His word was golden with those young guys. I think he kind of felt like he had to do certain things because they were always watching. They were always at the house. I had a lot of uncles.”
Draper joined the department in ’56, the same time as Virgil Harvell’s cousin, Charlie.
“When Charlie Harvell and I hit the streets after going to school,” Draper said, “the very first thing Alvin Kirk and Virgil Harvell told us both is, ‘You’re in for a rude awakening. … There’s a lot of prejudice here, and a lot of times you’re going to have to keep your mouth shut and bite your tongue and go on.’
“They were right. They didn’t lie.”
Whitt said her father never spoke much to his children about racial problems he experienced as an officer. He retired in 1974.
“I don’t remember that we had those kinds of conversations,” she said. “We knew there were problems, but they taught us not to be mad at people or dislike people. It was just, ‘Go out there and be the best you can be.’
“He made some great advancements at the department, but I’m sure there was some cost to him.”
***
Draper started out as a second-shift stationman, escorting prisoners back and forth to the courtroom on the third floor of the police station. A short time later, he began walking a beat in the black neighborhoods. At one point, he was put in charge of fingerprinting and photographing. The fact that he could type made him popular with other cops because he could type up their reports.
Draper took the sergeant’s promotional exam three times. He ranked 10th on the first list, but the department promoted only nine officers. The second time, Draper said, he ranked pretty far down the list. The third time, he was in the top five. But as he waited for a promotion, officers with less experience were promoted instead.
One day, he exploded.
“I said, ‘I’m not going to be his G.D. nigger no longer.’ I was screaming and ranting and raving. I said, ‘I’m going to the … NAACP, I’m going to everybody,’” Draper recalled.
He got a phone call at home the next day. It was chief of detectives Hobart “Curley” Rogers.
“He said, ‘What are you doing?’ I bristled up right away. I said, ‘I’m enjoying the day off, and my (relatives) are coming from Kansas City with their kids.’ He said, ‘Well, you better come down to the council chambers – you’re being made sergeant,’” Draper said.
“I had to explode to be made sergeant.”
In the 1970s, as racial tension continued to fester in the department, black officers formed the Springfield Ethical Police Society, the forerunner of the current black officers group, the Black Guardians Association of Central Illinois.
Early Ethical Police Society meetings were at Schluter’s home. The members mostly were younger black officers, and they faced some opposition from older ones.
“We were in our 20s and we’re being told, ‘You can’t do this, you can’t do that,’” Schluter said. “If those older guys wanted to put up with that, fine, but we didn’t.
“We wanted the same opportunities everybody had. All of us didn’t think it was fair that, in all the city of Springfield, ‘most all your black officers worked from Fifth Street east and from Carpenter Street south,” Schluter said.
In early 1976, the society complained to the Illinois Law Enforcement Commission that a question on the department’s 1974 sergeants’ promotional exam was openly racist in tone. The civil service commissioner who wrote the question responded that the officers were “crybabies.”
At the time, the department had 14 sergeants, none black, supervising 98 patrol officers. There were two black sergeants in other areas of the department, six black detectives and 11 black patrolmen. Lt. James Dickerson was chief of detectives, the department’s third highest-ranking officer.
The society in 1976 filed a federal discrimination lawsuit against the city, the police department and the civil service commission – the first such suit filed by Springfield’s black officers. It resulted in an out-of-court settlement, but new city promotional procedures essentially negated the deal.
Later that year, 10 officers were promoted to sergeant. None were black. Only one black officer was in the top 22 on the promotion list.
Black officers began to resign. Even Ethical Police Society president Leonard Day asked for a leave of absence, saying he doubted promotions were in the cards for black officers.
“They just ran us out,” Schluter said. “Guys retired. Where it was maybe 10 (black officers), it got to be eight, then five.”
***
Lea Joy was the divorced mother of two children, with a third on the way, when she went through civil service testing in 1983. At age 35, she was trying to beat the department’s age cut-off. She was hired, becoming Springfield’s first black woman police officer, although she had to delay going to the police academy for a few months while she recovered from a Caesarean delivery.
Despite the challenging start to her career, Joy went on to become the city’s first black female sergeant and then lieutenant.
“I was one who thought the best Christmas gift I got was Annie Oakley’s gun and the holster. I didn’t get dolls, I didn’t like that,” Joy said.
“I realized officers had the power and authority to influence change and do good. I didn’t get on the police force just to arrest people. I wanted to be the one there who could stop the bad from happening.”
Joy said she encountered unexpected challenges, both as a black and as one of only a few women on the force.
“I believed it had a deep thing to do with race, and then I believed they had a problem with my sex and then the fact that I’m also outspoken. But I (now) believe the bottom line was … that it was just race,” she said. “They saw me different than another white female. All of it got combined all together.
“I was literally written up almost each and every day. Tony Pettit, head of the Black Ethical Society, would call me at night and say, ‘Lea, what have you done now?’ … He’d say, ‘They’re refusing to ride with you, that you’d done this and you’d done that,’” she said.
In 2000, Joy, by then a lieutenant, was tapped to mentor a black recruit, Renatta Frazier, who department brass said was struggling to pass training requirements.
“I said, ‘Why did you pick me? Because I’m black?’” Joy said. “I said, ‘Now, you realize I don’t care if she’s black or white, if she doesn’t want to be an officer, I don’t want her to be an officer either. But if she wants to be an officer, I’m going to fight for her.’”
Joy popped in at the training academy every day to check on Frazier. She came to believe Frazier was the subject of discrimination. Although Joy saw similarities in the way the two women had been treated by fellow officers, she didn’t feel sorry for the recruit.
“I knew if she stayed that was what she was going to go through. It hadn’t gotten any better. It hadn’t changed,” she said.
Joy retired abruptly in June 2004, but remains a plaintiff in a federal discrimination lawsuit against the city.
***
No patrol officers were promoted to sergeant between 1983 and 1990 because of the lingering challenge by black officers.
When a new batch of sergeants was selected in 1990, all eight were white. Of 33 officers who passed the sergeants’ test two months earlier, only one, Kirk Robinson, was African-American, and he was 23rd on the eligibility list.
Two-and-a half-years later, Robinson achieved something no black officer with the Springfield Police Department had ever done: He was named chief of police. But within a few months, Robinson found himself the subject of an Illinois State Police investigation of allegations that Robinson had made “unwanted sexual advances” toward a female civilian employee.
A month later, though denying he was guilty of sexual harassment, Robinson resigned as chief. Two women eventually received out-of-court settlements as a result of lawsuits against Robinson and the city. He currently works for the Transportation Safety Administration at Abraham Lincoln Capital Airport. He did not respond to requests for an interview.
In October 1993, Mayor Ossie Langfelder appointed the city’s second black police chief, Harvey Davis, who had spent much of his career in investigations. Davis is the older brother of Lt. Rickey Davis, currently a lieutenant in investigations and one of six black officers embroiled in a federal racial discrimination lawsuit against the city.
Harvey Davis, like Robinson, was a proponent of community policing, a concept that puts officers into neighborhoods to get to know people. The department still emphasizes community policing, as demonstrated by the neighborhood police officer program. But Davis’ tenure as chief was plagued by reports of missing guns, drugs and cash from the department’s evidence room, a problem that had existed for years.
In September 1994, unionized officers overwhelmingly voted “no confidence” in Davis. Grievances included concerns about an overloaded detective bureau, a lack of communication between the investigations and operations divisions, and “many mixed messages” through several personnel changes, according to newspaper accounts. Davis dismissed the vote – reportedly only the second such vote in department history – as a popularity contest.
At his retirement in April 1995, Davis expressed pride in several accomplishments while chief, including creating specialty units such as the bicycle patrol and gang enforcement mobile unit.
“I feel I can look back five, 10, 15, 20 years from now and not be ashamed of any of it,” he said then.
Harvey Davis, who has an unlisted phone number, declined through his brother, Rickey, to be interviewed.
Rickey Davis said Harvey was a primary influence on his decision to join the police force. In 1979, after the younger Davis been laid off as a welder at Fiatallis, his brother urged him to take the police entrance exam.
“I knew about the problems,” Rickey Davis said. “To be truthful, a lot of people discouraged me from taking the job. Officers that had quit the department, officers that were still on the department, really sat me down and explained to me what I was getting into.
“I was willing to deal with it.”
When Davis joined the department, assistant chief Paul Harmon, who was black, asked him and two other new cops what they wanted to do with their careers.
“I knew right then what I wanted to do. It was well thought out, and it hasn’t changed since. I told him I wanted to work the street and work the tough beats to get experience to be a detective. And then I wanted to move up the rank in the detective division and become chief of detectives,” Davis said.
“That was kind of influenced by Harvey and reading about people like Chief Bowman when I was a kid.”
Davis became a detective in 1988. He was part of the department’s first major case unit in 1992 and was promoted to sergeant in 1994, though not without some controversy. Chief Harvey Davis wanted to promote the top 20 officers on the sergeants’ list, in part because of a backlog resulting from the earlier discrimination suit. The police union wanted fewer promotions. The city council and the mayor got involved, and all 20 eventually were promoted.
“Harvey put his career on the line for us. Basically, he was making a bold statement for black sergeants in the police department,” Davis said. “Harvey was saying, ‘This is your start in management. You guys are going to move on to lieutenant and possibly to one of you being chief.’ That was very difficult.”
Rickey Davis was promoted to lieutenant in 2001. But he said the discrimination suit and allegations he’s made against the department have affected his standing with other officers.
“Early in my career, I was very popular. I wasn’t known as the controversial person that I am now. You notice that people aren’t as friendly as they were before. I’m definitely not invited to certain functions, those types of things,” he said.
“I look at it that I’m just a link in the chain. I’m standing up for the older ones and what they left, standing up for myself and what I deserve and standing up for the ones behind me. It’s hard in a lot of ways to lose what you thought were your friends and to be on the outside. But I think what I’m doing is well worth it.”
***
Springfield residents for years to come will point to former officer Renatta Frazier when discussing allegations of racial discrimination within the Springfield Police Department.
Frazier’s problems at the training academy and later on the job led her to join the 2003 federal discrimination lawsuit. She said fellow officers and department brass discriminated against her from the time she attended the academy. But much of her complaint against the city stemmed from department officials’ failure to clear up false allegations that she, while a rookie officer, didn’t do enough to prevent a rape in 2001.
Frazier ultimately resigned from the force, and in April 2004, she received an $829,000 settlement from the city. Six other plaintiffs – Rickey Davis, Lea Joy, officers Melody Holman and Cleo Moore and retired officers Donald Ewing Jr. and Sgt. Ralph Harris — are still suing the city. The suit is in the lengthy deposition process. Trial is scheduled for June 2006.
In the lawsuit, Joy claims a fellow cop referred to her as an “African (expletive),” while other black officers claim they were passed over for promotions and retaliated against because of their race or because they spoke out about racial bias.
In a February 2003 newspaper account, Sherry Williams, the wife of Deputy Chief Rob Williams – a black officer who did not join the lawsuit – said when Williams was on the midnight shift in the late 1980s, he would go to her apartment to use the bathroom. He said he didn’t want to use the bathroom at the police station because “there would be all kinds of racial slurs and derogatory words.” And even though workers painted over the graffiti, it always appeared again.
Springfield Mayor Tim Davlin, coincidentally interviewed for this story shortly after being deposed by an attorney representing the officers suing the city, declined to comment on the history of the city’s black officers, allegations against the department or the department’s mood in light of the lawsuits.
He instead offered his hope that the city can step up efforts to hire more black officers. The department currently has 11 black officers – 10 men and one woman – out 269 sworn personnel. That’s about 4 percent.
Davlin plans to hire a professional recruiter to urge black applicants to seek jobs with the city’s police and fire departments.
“Our firefighters can resuscitate anyone God wants to have resuscitated, and our police department can solve any crime God would say is solvable,” Davlin said. “But I don’t think there is one person in the department who can be a professional recruiter for the department.”
Draper said he’s not surprised there still are allegations of racism, a full 50 years after he became an officer.
“It’s more of an undercurrent now,” he said. “I know what they’re going through.”
Schluter, who admits he “ran his mouth a lot” while he was an officer, has mixed feelings about the lawsuit.
“It’s always been my belief that I’ll go in there and talk to you about my concerns,” he said. “I think some things could have been better handled if they had been confronted first. I don’t believe in just going out and filing suit.”
Joy said she retired because she no longer found her job fun.
“I’m from the Martin Luther King era that wanted to believe in the goodness of people and that if you just worked, you’d finally be accepted. I finally realized that I had to do it a different way,” she said.
Joy added she’s not surprised allegations of racism linger.
“I’m not surprised because America has not addressed that. The black race has not been separated from slavery,” she said.
Rickey Davis is more optimistic.
“The demographics of the world are changing,” he said. “Springfield is going to change right along with it, if we want to or not.”
Relations improved under Howarth
Sept. 4, 2005If there ever was a golden age in terms of race relations on the Springfield Police Department, it was under Mayor Nelson Howarth in the 1950s and ’60s.
Beginning in 1963, Howarth ordered the racial integration of the city work force, including the police and fire departments. Howarth and his respected police chief, Silver Suarez, appointed Virgil Harvell as the city’s first black chief of detectives and hired more black police officers than at any other time in the city’s history.
Howarth, who was mayor of Springfield for three terms between 1955 and 1971, also ordered the teaming of white and black officers, a move that was announced about a month before Don Schluter became an officer.
“That was a big uproar on the police department, because a lot of (white) guys didn’t want to ride with black officers,” Schluter said. “He called one guy into his office and said, ‘I understand you don’t want to ride with a black guy.’ He said, ‘Nope.’ So Howarth said, ‘Here’s your resignation, sign it.’ I respect Howarth big-time.”
The late Dr. Edwin Lee, the first black president of the Springfield School Board, once said that, under Howarth, civil rights made the greatest strides in Springfield since Lincoln’s time.
Harry Draper was among the first black officers Suarez hired.
“Silver Suarez and Nelson Howarth were the best thing that ever happened to the black community,” Draper said. “Nelson Howarth had his mind made up he was going to break down all that, and he was a very hated man for a long time because he hired blacks.”
Suarez died in 2004. His son, Joe, said his father broke down at least one racial barrier long before he became chief of police. At the time, Suarez was in charge of dispatching officers to calls, and black cops were assigned to patrol only black neighborhoods, which for the most part were east of the 10th Street railroad tracks.
“He sent the first black officers from this side of town over to South Lowell Avenue. There were some nice homes there. There were some kids acting up, and the people just wanted it straightened out. It didn’t amount to a hill of beans. He took two (black) officers from here and dispatched them over there. They took care of it, and they left,” Joe Suarez said.
“The next day, the watch commander had a cow, because you just don’t do that. The blacks stay over on their side. That’s just the way it was done. The old man knew that. It was unspoken.
“The commander called the person who called (for police assistance) to apologize, and that person started right off saying the officers were just so nice and polite and helpful, you’ve got some fine officers, you should be proud of those guys. Nothing was said about them being black.
“Then, all of a sudden, they started coming across a little bit. That broke that line.”
Proportionately, Springfield had more black officers under Howarth and Suarez than at any other time in the history of the police department. A 1961 group photograph shows 10 black officers: Alonzo Bowman, who went on to become assistant chief; Sgt. Virgil Harvell; detectives Paul Ivy and Draper; and officers Charlie Lockhart, Paul Harmon, Girard “Mike” Covington, Harrison Gorens and Charlie Harvell.
Other black officers hired during the 1960s included brothers Dewey and DeWitt Crump; Harvey Davis, who went on to become police chief; Schluter; James Dickerson, who eventually was named chief of detectives; and Alvin W. Kirk, son of former officer Alvin Kirk.
Joe Suarez said his dad didn’t necessarily set out to hire black officers.
“He said if they’re black, OK. If they’re white, OK,” he said. “He just wanted good cops.”