One Righteous Man: Samuel Battle and the Shattering of the Color Line in New York

by Arthur Browne Narrated by Dominic Hoffman

Overview

A history of African Americans in New York City from the 1910s to 1960, told through the life of Samuel Battle, the New York Police Department's first black officer.
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When Samuel Battle broke the color line as New York City's first African American cop in the second decade of the twentieth century, he had to fear his racist colleagues as much as criminals. He had to be three times better than his white peers, and many times more resilient. His life was threatened. He was displayed like a circus animal. Yet, fearlessly claiming his rights, he prevailed in a four-decade odyssey that is both the story of one man's courageous dedication to racial progress and a harbinger of the divisions between police and the people they serve that plague twenty-first-century America.

By dint of brains, brawn, and an outsized personality, Battle rode the forward wave of African American history in New York. He circulated among renowned turn-of-the-century entertainers and writers. He weathered threatening hostility as a founding citizen of black Harlem. He served as “godfather” to the regiment of black soldiers that won glory in World War I as the “Hellfighters of Harlem.” He befriended sports stars like Joe Louis, Jesse Owens, and Sugar Ray Robinson, and he bonded with legendary tap dancer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson. Along the way, he mentored an equally smart, equally tough young man in a still more brutal fight to integrate the New York Fire Department.

At the close of his career, Battle looked back proudly on the against-all-odd journey taken by a man who came of age as the son of former slaves in the South. He had navigated the corruption of Tammany Hall, the treachery of gangsters like Lucky Luciano and Dutch Schultz, the anything-goes era of Prohibition, the devastation of the Depression, and the race riots that erupted in Harlem in the 1930s and 1940s. By then he was a trusted aide to Mayor Fiorello La Guardia and a friend to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

Realizing that his story was the story of race in New York across the first half of the century, Battle commissioned a biography to be written by none other than Langston Hughes, the preeminent voice of the Harlem Renaissance. But their eighty-thousand-word collaboration failed to find a publisher, and has remained unpublished since. Using Hughes's manuscript, which is quoted liberally throughout this book, as well as his own archival research and interviews with survivors, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Arthur Browne has created an important and compelling social history of New York, revealed a fascinating episode in the life of Langston Hughes, and delivered the riveting life and times of a remarkable and unjustly forgotten man, setting Samuel Battle where he belongs in the pantheon of American civil rights pioneers.

Editorial Reviews

JANUARY 2016 - AudioFile

Narrator Dominic Hoffman's deep, raspy voice guides listeners through the ever-changing world of Samuel Battle, the first African-American policeman in New York City in 1911. His biography proves a fascinating lens through which to explore race, urban life, and the monumental shifts in American culture in the first half of the twentieth century. Hoffman’s cadence and emphasis draw out the stark contrasts of Battle's life as he struggled to maintain justice in a society that denied him equality in the eyes of the law. Hoffman adds the right amount of emotion and deliberation to capture Battle’s challenges and triumphs. A strong narration and compelling story make this entire production a powerful experience. L.E. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

From the Publisher

An especially timely book”
—Kirkus Reviews

“The author provides a rich overview of the civil rights struggle in Gotham, and its place in the city's cultural and political history....Of interest, and recommended for, readers of civil rights histories.” 
—Library Journal

“Arthur Browne, a New York-based journalist, writes movingly of Battle’s fight not only to enter the NYPD but to succeed within it. . . . Although Battle died in 1966 without having seen his story published, it’s impossible not to feel how much he would have appreciated Brown’s work, which wraps the man’s own words in a reporter’s thorough, lively accounting of a life well lived.”
—The Boston Globe

“The magnificent—and moving—story of the first black New York City cop…struggling valiantly for dignity in a world more often interested in his marginalization (or worse)…forming a tragic but ultimately heroic understanding of the inner workings of the greatest city on earth.”
—Ken Burns

“You’d expect a newspaper editor with a Pulitzer to be up to speed on the news, and nobody knows New York better. What’s impressive about Arthur Browne’s book is how scrupulous he is in drawing on an unpublished biography by Langston Hughes, while contributing his own vivid portrait of a hero up against mobsters, corrupt pols, and imminent violence.”
—Harold Evans, author of The American Century

“One Righteous Man is one righteous biography—at times chilling in its account of Samuel Battle’s ordeal as a key black pioneer in Manhattan but ultimately inspiring as a record of his indomitable spirit. Browne’s book is also timely today as a commentary on the tangled webs of ethnicity and racism in the evolution of ‘New York’s Finest.’”
—Arnold Rampersad, author of The Life of Langston Hughes

“The relationship between the police and the community is one of the most important issues of our time—and so is the idea that ‘the police are the public and the public are the police,’ as Sir Robert Peel wrote in 1829. Sam Battle's towering example helped the NYPD get closer to that ideal. Today we look more like the city we serve than ever before, but Arthur Browne's terrific book reminds us that the journey to get here wasn't easy, and would have been impossible without a pioneer and hero like Sam Battle.” 
—William J. Bratton, Police Commissioner, NYPD

“This is a riveting and important read. Samuel Battle’s story reminds us that when it comes to fighting crime, empathy and respect are equally as powerful as batons and guns. One Righteous Man is an especially relevant contribution to our national conversation about how to best ensure every officer upholds the oath to protect and serve every American.” 
—Ben Jealous, former president and CEO of the NAACP

“Now, thanks to Mr. Browne’s fine work, Battle can take his place alongside Jackie Robinson and many others in the ranks of African-Americans who rammed open the doors that thousands more have since walked through, seldom knowing who made it possible.”
—Bryan Burrough, The Wall Street Journal

“What is seemingly about a pioneering trailblazer is really Arthur Browne’s sweeping treatise on the experiences of African-Americans from slavery to freedom, and it is very impressive in the rich detail and context in which he situates not only Samuel Battle but also Samuel Battle’s parents and grandparents going back to the Revolutionary period.”
—Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

Library Journal

05/01/2015
In 1952, poet Langston Hughes finished a draft of a manuscript titled Battle of Harlem, which was a commissioned biography of Samuel Battle, the first African American officer in the New York Police Department. The manuscript failed to find a publisher, and Battle, a civil rights pioneer, died forgotten in 1966. Browne (I, Koch) retells Battle's fight for integration in New York City during the first half of the 20th century. The subject's time on the force brought him in contact with everyone from Booker T. Washington and Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt to writers from the Harlem Renaissance and athletes such as track-and-field star Jesse Owens and boxer Jack Johnson. The author provides a rich overview of the civil rights struggle in Gotham, and its place in the city's cultural and political history, but sometimes his attempts to include a wealth of material results in long digressions that detract from Battle's personal and professional difficulties. VERDICT Of interest, and recommended for, readers of civil rights histories, but the fractured narration and detailed accounts of secondary characters may turn away those seeking a more straightforward story.—John Rodzvilla, Emerson Coll., Boston

JANUARY 2016 - AudioFile

Narrator Dominic Hoffman's deep, raspy voice guides listeners through the ever-changing world of Samuel Battle, the first African-American policeman in New York City in 1911. His biography proves a fascinating lens through which to explore race, urban life, and the monumental shifts in American culture in the first half of the twentieth century. Hoffman’s cadence and emphasis draw out the stark contrasts of Battle's life as he struggled to maintain justice in a society that denied him equality in the eyes of the law. Hoffman adds the right amount of emotion and deliberation to capture Battle’s challenges and triumphs. A strong narration and compelling story make this entire production a powerful experience. L.E. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2015-02-14
A veteran New York City journalist relates the dramatic saga of the first uniformed African-American police officer.New York Daily News editorial page editor Browne (co-author: I, Koch: A Decidedly Unauthorized Biography of the Mayor of New York City, Edward I. Koch, 1985) never met Samuel Battle (1883-1966), but he decided to write Battle's biography due to an unusual resource: an unpublished manuscript based on Battle's conversations with African-American poet Langston Hughes. In 1949, Battle hired Hughes to interview him and produce a manuscript. Hughes needed money, so he assented. However, according to Browne, Hughes' detachment led to a low-quality work that was rejected by multiple publishers. As a result, Battle died without a wide readership understanding the impressive accomplishment of a courageous cop who broke the racial barrier, at frequent risk to his safety. Battle rightly feared street thugs encountered during his daily work, but mostly, he feared the white police officers, most of whom exhibited overt racism. Some New York cops aimed racist comments at Battle, but most of them gave him the silent treatment, literally never speaking to him, hoping he would feel so isolated that he would quit. Reared in small-town North Carolina, Battle had learned how to deal with racism, and he felt determined to show the police command and the New York City mayor that his performance could match or outpace any other cop's. Eventually, enough powerful New York City individuals recognized Battle's abilities, and he was promoted to the rank of supervisor, where he was in charge of many white officers. Browne also explains Battle's major role in the New York Fire Department's racial integration, as well as the friendships he developed with prominent figures, including first lady Eleanor Roosevelt and boxing champion Sugar Ray Robinson. An occasionally rambling but especially timely book, given recent tragedies involving certain police forces across the country.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940172106989
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	02/02/2016
Edition description:	Unabridged

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