Melissa McFadden

Walking the Thin Black Line Melissa McFadden

Melissa McFadden always wanted to be an officer when she grew up--to help people. As she left the disciplined, rule driven, world of the Air Force Security Services and landed her dream job in the Columbus, Ohio Division of Police, she learned that policing was something very different than what she had always dreamed it would be. As a Black woman from the coal country of West Virginia she found herself confronting a big city racist police culture that was born in the slave patrols of Reconstruction, emboldened through the Jim Crow era, challenged in the Civil Rights era and still gaining momentum in the Black Lives Matter era. She walked a thin Black line each day that divided her ability to defend her community against police brutality from her ability to defend herself against discrimination on the job. Her memoir is about her journey through the thicket of racist union contracts, unfair assignment practices, and discriminatory disciplinary decisions. She shares how racism hides within police culture, because the purpose of policing has never shed its original focus-a war on Black people. She never imagined the day that she would be standing in solidarity with young Black activists and their white allies, holding a sign saying Police Reform Now, while shouting BLACK LIVES MATTER! Her voice was silenced for over twenty years of her career through threats of retaliation that included taking her entire pension from her. She has fought, cried, sued, mentored, and demanded justice for her Black colleagues and the Black people of Columbus. And now she can show you her efforts and her failures in hopes that the more you know the more you can be part of the solution that is so long overdue.