When Archie McKay put on his City of Miami Police uniform for the first time in 1954, 10 years after the city hired its first five Black officers, it was a bittersweet moment. While he was proud to be a police officer, he said some of his own people were not.
“Some of our people rejected us calling us Uncle Toms and other derogatory names,” McKay said.
But being a Miami Police officer was what McKay had decided to do. So, he stayed for 26 years, quietly working behind the scenes to make changes in the department to benefit the young officers following him. My late husband James F. Hines Sr., who ranked No. 2 in the second integrated graduating class from the Police Academy in 1961, was one of them…