By Evan S. Benn
The Miami Herald
MIAMI, Fla. - Ralph White learned to shoot a pistol, make arrests and solve crimes during covert nighttime meetings inside a rec center in the projects of Liberty City.
The reason: The first black man being trained as a police officer in segregated Miami couldn’t be seen in public in the summer of 1944.
Even after their swearing in -- at a barbershop -- White and four other men who became Miami’s first black officers had to patrol streets on bikes and weren’t allowed to arrest white suspects.
But White persevered, protecting his community for 32 years behind a Miami Police Department badge and paving the way for legions of black officers.
Ralph Vincent White Sr. died Monday in Orangeburg, S.C. He was 90.
“He thought the world of the Miami Police Department, of being able to serve his community,” said Detective Delrish Moss, a department spokesman who calls White a role model. “To have endured all the difficulties he faced and still find purpose in his service -- what a remarkable person.”
White grew up near Jacksonville and moved to Miami with his parents as a teenager. He worked as a stock clerk and ran a lawncare business -- a job he continued throughout his years on the force.
“Daddy would do yard work from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m., then come home, shower, and go to be a policeman from 3 p.m. to midnight,” daughter Avis Butler said. “He still came home on his dinner break and ate with us every night.”
Miami’s all-white police department needed black officers in the early 1940s.
Crime in Liberty City and Overtown -- then known as “Colored Town” -- was rising, while the department had lost dozens of officers to World War II. Black people accounted for about 18 percent of the county’s 360,000 residents at the time, and they were often victims of white-on-black crime.
Miami’s black leaders demanded their community be cleaned up, and they persuaded Miami police brass to let black patrolmen do it. The community leaders -- including James Scott of the Scott Housing Project in Liberty City, Bishop John Culmer and dentist Ira Davis -- chose White, Edward Kimball, Clyde Lee, Moody Hall and John Milledge.
They were sworn in on Sept. 1, 1944 -- three years before Jackie Robinson broke the color line in baseball and five years before women were allowed to join the Miami police force.
A Miami Herald article about a convention of Southern police chiefs reported that crime in black neighborhoods had been cut in half in the seven years since black officers joined the Miami force. The Nov. 2, 1951, headline proclaimed, “Dixie Chiefs Laud Negro Policemen.”
The men were considered “patrolmen” at first, not officers, and were not allowed in department headquarters for nearly 20 years until the force was integrated in 1962. Even then, the black officers had to use separate bathrooms.
“Mr. White -- we all call him that out of respect -- always acted in the highest manner as a police officer,” said former Chief Clarence Dickson, the first black graduate of the integrated Miami police academy in 1961 and the department’s first black chief in 1985. “We saw how he acted, saw his demeanor, and we tried to model ourselves after him.”
After White’s retirement in 1976, he continued to be a presence in the community. He helped establish a federal credit union through the St. James AME Church in Liberty City, which he managed for 35 years. He moved his family to South Carolina after Hurricane Andrew destroyed their Gables by the Sea home.
Education was close to White’s heart -- his wife, Josephine, taught in Miami-Dade public schools for 35 years. Also, White was a frequent guest at Westview Elementary in North Miami-Dade, where he taught students about his pioneering police work.
“The most important thing is you have to be a person of good character,” White told a group of Westview children in 1989. “You’ve got to feel and know you want to do the things that are right.”
White was the last remaining of the original five black police officers. Besides his wife and daughter, he is survived by sons Shannon and Ralph Jr., nephew Loucius Jones, six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
A viewing was being planned for this evening at Poitier Funeral Home, 2321 NW 62nd St., in Miami. Call Poitier at 305-638-5030 for details. A memorial service will be at noon Friday at New Birth Baptist Church Cathedral of Faith International, 2300 NW 135th St., with full police honors from the Miami PD. Burial will be Monday in Orangeburg.
Copyright 2007 Miami Herald