The nation's first black woman sheriff: Jackie Barrett

Ebony, August, 1995 by Muriel L. Whetstone

When Jacquelyn H. Barrett was elected on November 3,1992, as the country's first African-American female sheriff, she hoped her victory would help dispel people's image of the typical Georgia sheriff--a pot-bellied Southern gentleman with a chewed-end cigar dangling from the side of his mouth. Nearly three years later, she concedes that it will be a while before this "hard and ingrained" image is replaced, but that she has definitely given people other options to consider.

"I am a Black woman. I can't, and I don't choose to, change anything about that [attribution]. I say to other women, and I have to keep saying to myself, 'You bring to the table, what you bring to the table and that's not always bad stuff,'" Barrett says. "I don't try to become one of the 'boys' because I'm not."

As a matter of fact, after Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell appointed Chief Beverly Harvard in 1994 to bead the city's police department, Georgia became the only state to entrust the safety of one of its major cities and its largest county to African-American women.

What Barrett has brought to the sherrif's table are more than 20 years of law enforcement experience that includes 10 years with the Georgia Peace Officer Standards and Training Council--the state oversight board for licensing and training Georgia officers--and 5 years as the director of the Fulton County Public Safety Training Center, where she was responsible for training the county deputies she now commands.

Barrett's command, with its accompanying $40 million-plus annual budget, includes responsibility for more than 800 sworn deputies and civilian personnel. Department personnel operate rate the county's 1,700-capacity jail, transport prisoners to and from court, provide courtroom security and administer the county's warrant and civil process services. Barrett also inherited responsibility for millions of dollars' worth of lawsuits, filed on behalf of allegedly mistreated prisoners, and the court-ordered improvements to the jail that resulted from the lawsuits.

Additionally, Barrett assumed leadership of a department suffering from such low employee morale that members of the deputies' union "literally put their jobs on the line" by voting to pay her $2,184 qualifying fee so she could run against their boss, the incumbent.

Barrett also brings to the sheriffs' table 20 years as a mother who has successfully raised two children--Kimberly, 21, and 18-year-old Alan--while managing a demanding career in a traditionally male-dominated profession. "I'm a mother and I don't hide that from anyone," says Barrett, who is also a recent divorcee. "And I talk about being a mother in hopes that my experience will help other mothers in this community who are trying to raise their kids."

The sheriff is a strong advocate of not only parents being responsible for their children but of communities taking a role in their nurturing and upbringing as well. The roots of that philosophy can be traced to her own upbringing on the campus of Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, N.C. That's where her mother, Ocie P. Harrison, who served a number of years as secretary to the university president, and Barrett's deceased father, Cornelius Sr., reared her and her younger brother, Cornelius Jr. Living among the families of academic scholars had a tremendous impact on the Harrison children, and Barrett says "there, was never any question that we would finish high school and go on to college--never."

It was during her tenure at Beaver College in Glenside, Pa., that Barrett became fascinated with the field of criminal justice. "I was also somewhat afraid of it at first because you are dealing with an element that has obviously shown "you that they don't abide by the rules," she recalls. "But I became absolutely fascinated by it and I think even more fascinated by the fact that there weren't very many women in the field. So it became something of a challenge." Later, she obtained a master's degree in sociology from what is now Clark-Atlanta University.

Asked to further define her fascination with law enforcement and she answers, quietly, yet decisively. "The power...The law enforcement community is a powerful institution in any community and that power was absolutely fascinating to me," she says.

Coming of age in the heart of the Civil Rights Movement, Barrett says she observed that authority figures were able to control the people by controlling the police. "I didn't like [what I saw]," she remembers, "but I could still take a step back and say," This is incredible. I think I'd like to do something with that, to change that. But I'd prefer to do it from the inside, rather than fight for change from the outside."'

From the inside, Sheriff Barrett says the job's daily challenges are still what she enjoys most. "No two days are the same. It's really a people business. You come in contact with a lot of people that you help in small ways and in larger ways. A lot of the time I feel good about getting people off the street that shouldn't be in the community, and that's always a very good feeling."