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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - VI. Justice - 25. The Police and Other Public Contacts - 1. Local Petty Officials - 2. The Southern Policeman
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53? An American Dilemma
courteously in the Upper South than in the Deep South. The observer
feels that this whole problem of Negroes^ public contacts with all the
minor functionaries in private and municipal service would deserve inten-
sive study. These contacts are of paramount practical importance: they
represent the major part of all official relations of Negroes with the organ-
ized society in which they live, and they determine largely their attitudes
to this society. A change to easier, friendlier, and more impartial public
contacts would improve race relations immensely. As will be pointed out
later in this chapter, there is a growing group of public contacts of a new
type which meets these demands much better than the old type here
reviewed.*
2 . The Southern Policeman
The central relation in this system—^and the prototype and sanction of
all other public contacts—^is that between Negroes and the local police.
In purely rural districts the police consist of the sheriff and his deputies.
Usually they are petty politicians with no police training at all except the
experiences they get in their work. In the rural South the caste rules are
so fixed, the contacts between whites and Negroes so continual, the caste
control so pervasive, and so much of the daily suppression of the individ-
uals of the lower caste is, as we pointed out, taken care of by employers
and landowners themselves, that the peace officers^ police duties are inter-
mittent and restricted to occasional incidents. They then appear as the
executors of the public will in the locality and are backed by the courts.
In the Southern cities where the two racial groups are more separated, the
duty of policing the population becomes a continuous and specialized task.
The police then also become more directly important for interracial rela-
tions.
It is of great interest to study the qualifications and personality type of
the Southern policeman who has been awarded this crucial position in the
caste society. A special investigation was undertaken for this study by Dr.
Arthur Raper, who made an inquiry as of 1940 into the personnel of the
police force in J12 towns and cities, in 14 Southern states.® The level of
general education among policemen is low.** In many small cities ^^almost
anyone on the outside of the penitentiary who weighs enough and is not
• See Section 5 of this chapter.
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