Atlanta Police Recruits Get A Civil Rights History Lesson

The recruits watched police dogs bark at protesters in the 1960s. They heard former Alabama Gov. George Wallace’s famous “Segregation Forever” speech. And they passed by rubble from the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing.

All of this is part of a civil rights history lesson that the Atlanta Police Department recently added to its recruits’ training. It was developed as protests over police shootings have had law enforcement around the country looking for ways to build trust.

Hartley, the Atlanta class’ coordinator, said the goal of the museum tour is to shape how recruits approach the job.

“It’s one day and it’s a couple of hours, but it’s exposure to something you were unaware of,” Hartley said. “The simple exposure itself can be that small motivation to make sure I don’t treat someone else the same way people were treated in the past.”

At one point in the tour, recruits sat at a replica of the lunch counter in the Greensboro sit-in. They put on headphones and listened to the threats the protesters faced.

One recruit, Michael Wheeler, was moved.

“You hear, they’re in your face, they’re screaming, saying they’re going to put a fork in your neck. I couldn’t imagine what that would’ve been like to go through that experience,” he said.

Wheeler, 23, is white and from a small town in North Georgia with no traffic lights.

He said he did already know the story of the Greensboro sit-in.

“I mean, I definitely heard about that, growing up in school. It’s something different, when you’re sitting at that counter. You feel it, you feel those emotions. And it’s tough,” Wheeler said.

He sees how the experience will help him as an Atlanta police officer.

“Personally being a white male, knowing what it was like for black males and females inside this city, and what they had to go through, to be able to put my feet in those shoes? I think it’s very relevant,” he said.

That’s not to say that the visit affects only white recruits.

Yvette Shorts looked at a room dedicated to civil rights activists who were murdered.

She said she’s from New York, and being black and Latina, her family talked about racism in the South.

“The stories always get told over and over about segregation and about what happened back then, how people had to ride the different buses,” Shorts said. “But I’ve never been so up close with it, so face to face with it.”

Shorts said she always wanted to be a police officer. But where she grew up, people didn’t trust those in uniform.

“I was in a neighborhood that wasn’t like police-friendly. So I couldn’t tell my peers that this was something I wanted to do when I was 12 years old. From 12 maybe until high school, it was like a secret that I kept to myself,” Shorts said.

She knows that mistrust is still around, but is excited to finally be training for the job. This tour only makes her want to do it more, she said.

“If I wanted to help people before, I definitely want to be there to help now,” Shorts said. “And if I can make a change, I’m definitely for that.”

The recruits who came here, like Shorts and Wheeler, are actually brand new. They’re only in their first few weeks of training. Hartley said there’s a reason for that.

“When we move on, we get into controlled tactics, things of that nature, handling calls, what we call reality-based training, you want them to have that mindset of treating people fairly before we get there,” he said.

It’s worth noting that Atlanta isn’t the only law enforcement agency to do this.

Other police departments incorporate history lessons into training. Nashville and Montgomery also emphasize the civil rights movement.

As the Atlanta officers in training finished touring the museum, recruit John Hordesky was floored.

He’s white and grew up in Pennsylvania, and was shocked to learn about the marches, sit-ins and violence, which all happened during the Civil Rights era.

“The fact that it wasn’t that long ago. It would be one thing if this was, 1820, I could be like, ‘Oh, that was another world.’ Reality is, a lot of people are probably alive in Atlanta. Wasn’t John Lewis right in the middle of that? I see him on TV all the time,” Hordesky said. “That definitely hit home.”

Hordesky expected the visit to stick with him. He said the role of police officers is already in the spotlight.

“And knowing now I’m in a place like Atlanta, where that’s a huge issue, that’s something everybody needs to be aware of,” he said.

With that, Hordesky and the other recruits filed out of the Center for Civil and Human Rights.

After their visit to the museum, they returned to classes at the Atlanta police academy, with five months of training ahead of them.