Excerpts from an oral hisory of

Deputy Chief
James Stanford Griffin

Part I - History of Black Officers

At one time during the twenties, there had been eight Black policemen. And, of course, we’ve had Black policemen since 1881. Lewis Thomas [1] was the first Black policeman. He was appointed in June of 1881. Seventeen black officers were appointed to the department from 1881 to 1921, but then we went from 1921 until 1937 and not a single Black was appointed to the police department. They had a Commissioner at that time, but he had gone on record. As long as he was commissioner, there’d be no more colored policemen.

Well, in 1937 Bob Turpin [2] - he was from all places, Grand Forks, North Dakota. He was born and raised there, and he came down and he passed the test and he got on the job. That had been the first appointment they had in, oh about fifteen, sixteen years. And when I went on the job, there were four Black guys on the job. There were sixty-seven guys appointed the in 1941 when I was appointed, and I would say a good fifteen of those guys quit. But out of those sixty-seven guys, I earned the highest rank and stayed the longest of any of them.

I went on the job in August 1941. As a Black officer you always got the dirty details. I use to walk beats on skid row like Seventh and Wacouta. That was skid row. You’d get a bed down there—what they call a cot—for a quarter. A lot of D-horns [3] drinking. Come to work in the morning there would always be four, five or six guys laying in the street, drunk. You’d have to call a wagon, haul them in, things like that. Of course, in an area like that you had fights. Guys would go in some of those bars and cause trouble, and you’d have to go in and straighten it out. Either arrest the guy, put the guy out. And if there were any disagreeable details, I got them.

Being a Black officer I was there five years before they put me in a squad car. I walked a beat. You deal with a lot of drunks and domestics, fights, disorderly conduct, things like that, disorderly houses, bootleggers. When I started walking beats the guys walking beats didn’t have radios. Not only me, nobody did. They had two-way radios on most of the cars when I came on.

[1] Lewis Thomas’s career in the Saint Paul Police Department is documented in David Taylor’s African Americans in Minnesota, Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2002.

[2] Bob Turpin: Served SPPD April 1, 1937 - December 2, 1965.

[3] D-horns: perpetually drunk person

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