When Samuel Battle broke the color line as New York City's first African American policeman early in the twentieth century, he had to fear his racist colleagues as much as the criminals. His forty-year career with the New York City Police Department is both the story of one man's courageous battle for acceptance and also the story of the progress of racial diversity. Throughout his career, Samuel Battle mixed with the rich and famous and the rich and infamous but he never forgot who he was and the job that he was doing.
