Darktown by Thomas Mullen Page A

“Isn’t that what you want? You’re so huffy about seeing a Negro in a uniform that you can’t see this for what it is: a better kind of segregation. Give the colored cops the colored neighborhoods, and we’ll never have to set foot in there again. They’ll handle their affairs, and we’ll handle ours.”
    Dunlow was watching Rake with a kind of stony silence. The others looked like they were either having trouble following his argument or were wondering if he was deranged.
    â€œLord have mercy,” Helton finally said with a shake of his head. He waved to the waitress for a refill. “A white cop saying that what we need is more black cops. Guess you got a little shell shock over there in France, boy. A little weary of fighting.”
    â€œThat’s a mighty nice story, Rakestraw,” Peterson said. “But there are only two ways this little experiment might end. One is them niggers running through burning streets, firing rifles into the air as the wholedamned city turns to chaos. The other is us shoving those badges so far down their throats, we’ll be able to cut their balls off with ’em.”

    Rake and Dunlow had been barely driving a minute when Dispatch called in with a report of an assault in Darktown. An old colored woman who lived on Fitzgerald had seen “four or five” men in a fight, some of whom she thought might have been colored officers.
    â€œThis sounds good,” Dunlow said to Rake after telling Dispatch they were on their way.

    It was a side street five blocks south of Auburn, Dunlow driving so fast he nearly drove over the scrum of Negroes in the center of the road, braking just in time. Rake wondered if maybe he’d been toying with hitting them on purpose.
    Negro Officer Little was cuffing one of two Negroes who were lying facedown on the sidewalk. The other was already cuffed, his hands slick with red.
    Negro Officer Boggs was a few feet away, on one knee, a blue handkerchief held to his forehead.
    â€œWhat these niggers do?” Dunlow barked.
    Little looked up after cuffing the second man, eyes livid. He and Boggs were both out of breath.
    â€œThis one stabbed that one,” Little said. Rake didn’t know much about Little, who was black as pitch and wiry thin, other than the fact that his uncle ran the local Negro paper. “And when we tried to break it up, the one who’d been stabbed threw a bottle at Officer Boggs.”
    One of the men on the ground wasn’t so much out of breath, Rake realized, as moaning in pain.
    â€œWell, well,” Dunlow laughed. “That’s why I always let niggers fight it out amongst themselves before getting involved.”
    â€œThere were two children and a woman with them, so we didn’t think that was a good idea.”
    Boggs’s eyes looked dizzy. A streak of blood ran down his forehead and the handkerchief wasn’t doing a good job sopping it all. He did not appear to be in a rush to stand all the way up. He managed to say, “Call an ambulance, please.”
    â€œAh, you look all right,” Dunlow said. “Better work on your reflexes, though.”
    â€œNot for me. For him.”
    Boggs, with the elbow that was attached to the hand applying pressure to his own wound, indicated one of the two men lying on the ground.
    â€œGut stabbed,” Little explained. “Pretty bad.”
    Dunlow kicked at the gut-stabbed one. “Roll over, nigger.”
    Rake felt he should go into the squad car and call the ambulance, yet Dunlow himself hadn’t moved to do so. The door was open, the radio only a few feet away.
    The stabbed Negro could not roll over on his own. So Dunlow kicked him in the ribs.
    Little backed up, outraged. “He can’t roll over, Dunlow, he’s cuffed!”
    Dunlow kicked the Negro again. The Negro howled in pain.
    Boggs stood up. “Call the ambulance.”
    Dunlow ignored him. Rake considered making the