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Conrad Laurel Raiford (December 27, 1907 – May 20, 2002) was an athlete, goodwill ambassador and one of Greensboro, North Carolina's first African-American police officers.〔(: News-Record.com : Greensboro, North Carolina )〕 ==Career== In 1946, Raiford was one of only six black men recruited by a then all white Greensboro Police Department. Although the tall and muscular man was proud to be a pioneering member of law enforcement, Raiford resented the way he and his fellow black officers were treated in a city that was then one of the more populated incorporated areas in the Tarheel state. The officers were not allowed to arrest anyone outside their ethnicity. "I had to wear rejects," Raiford told his daughter, Sharon Crews during an interview for ABC News. "I had to wear pants another officer had been wearing for two years. They were shiny. They didn't fit." 〔"NOTED ATHLETE, 1926 GRADUATE OF A&T DIES," ''Greensboro News & Record'', May 22, 2002, by Jim Schlosser〕 Things were not any better in the North and Midwest. "They even built a second bathroom down in the cold and rat-infested basement of city hall because we were considered less than human, said Raiford. "It took a special man to take that." Life for America's first black police officers was not easy. For Raiford, the tension and humiliation became too much to bear. After a five-year tour of duty, Raiford traded his badge for a rundown schoolhouse for black children located in a remote area of Guilford County called Goodwill. A defunct book titled "Hiawatha, the Warrior," was compulsory reading for all of the first through twelfth graders he taught. Although Raiford's days of patrolling the streets of Greensboro had come to an end in 1951, his commitment to improving the lives of those disenfranchised by Jim Crow was just beginning. 〔"BLACK LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS COME A LONG WAY," ''Greensboro News & Record'', February 3, 1993, by Kelly Simmons〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Conrad L. Raiford」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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