20-year-old letter to the editor 'has heightened relevance' amid Louisville protests today

Editor's note: This letter was published in The Courier Journal 20 years ago. The writer, a Louisville native, resubmitted it this month saying, "I believe that this letter has even heightened relevance today." 

Franklin F. Jones was living in Montgomery County, Maryland, when he wrote the letter on March 10, 2000. He was upset after learning that former Louisville police Chief Gene Sherrard gave medals of valor to two white officers who shot to death an 18-year-old Black teenager — Desmond Rudolph — as he was attempting to flee in a stolen vehicle that had become stuck in an alley.

The two officers fired 22 rounds into the vehicle, saying they feared Rudolph was going to run them down. The shooting sparked protests in the Black community, with civil rights leaders calling it police brutality. Mayor Dave Armstrong fired Sherrard on March 2, 2000, the day after he handed out awards to the officers. The firing led to police protests.

Jones was moved to write about the Louisville controversy, as well as a traffic stop in Maryland in which his wife and daughter were "disrespected" by police who pulled them over for having a tail light out.

Here's the letter:

Dear Sirs:

I graduated from Louisville Male High School in 1961. I am an African American. My family has deep and long roots in Louisville. I have bragged often to others about Louisville and its racial climate. I am disgusted today when I have to accept that my beloved city has succumbed to the pervasive American bigotry that characterizes the rest of the United States of America. The whole world knows that as a 57-year-old African American man I must be careful here in the Washington, D.C., area when pulled over by the police because they just might shoot me for the mere sport of it. They know that the feelings and opinion of my darling wife of 30 years and my five children won’t mean a whit whenever some bigoted police person decides he or she doesn’t like my looks.

My children happen to be an NYU-educated actress; a West Point graduate and University of Virginia-educated lawyer; a Hampton University educated engineer working in Spain with his family; a Tuskegee University student; and a seventh-grade magnet school student. The police can simply go to court and claim that they thought I was going to harm them, and even Black people on the jury will see it their way. Later for what my family thinks. This is also why a barely-dry-behind-the-ears Montgomery County, Maryland, policeman can speak so insultingly to my wife and young daughter on a minor, routine traffic stop without fear of discipline.

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But now I must face the fact that even in my beloved Louisville, that same situation exists. How ironic. And the police chief is offended because the mayor had the audacity to suggest that he might be wrong for honoring some of his officers who committed such a terrible mistake.

I thought when I was an 18-year-old arrested in a civil rights march on Fourth Street in Louisville in the early 60s that we were accomplishing something. Oh, how naive we were!

Thank God that you have a mayor now who will stand up to the arrogance of such an apparently bigoted and power hungry megalomaniacal police chief.  I hope that the mayor sticks to his guns, and that the message will get throughout the police ranks so that the police will feel at least a little constrained when they encounter innocent citizens simply trying to pursue the American way of life.

Respectfully yours,

Franklin F. Jones