The Cop Who Ran the County

Al Rankins in the county meeting room where he used to preside. PHOTO BY PHILLIP WALLER

By Kayleigh Skinner

In 1965, the first U.S. combat troops touched down in Vietnam, an assassin gunned down Malcolm X in New York and white cops savagely attacked hundreds of blacks marching for voting rights in Selma, Ala.

One day that August, a young African-American drove along a dusty highway in rural Mississippi. He’d spent the last year in Florida with the Air Force, and now he was headed home to Greenville before he, too, went overseas.

The air was hot and dry as he approached a snack bar on the side of the road. Al Rankins thought a cold drink would quench his thirst. So the 21-year-old walked up to the window and ordered a milkshake.

“We can’t serve you up here – you’re going to have to go ‘round back.”

“I’m in the military and I’m a citizen,” Rankins said. “I’m not going to the back.”

Rankins ran the board from the 113-year-old Washington County Courthouse. COURTESY WASHINGTON COUNTY

When he refused, the manager called the cops, who told him if he didn’t leave they would arrest him. He left, still parched.

After finishing his military service, Rankins returned, hoping things would be different. “Things really were different in the military. When you leave that environment for a few years, you try and forget some things,” Rankins said. “I’m thinking that things really had changed and they really hadn’t.”

But they did for him.

The story of Al Rankins is the story of a man who went from the back door of a snack bar to the front door of the Board of Supervisors office as the most powerful man in Washington County. It is the story of a Vietnam veteran who leveraged the GI Bill to get an education and become a high-ranking Greenville cop. It is the story of a man who used “horse sense,” humanity, generosity and loyalty as weapons against the indignities of a deeply ingrained Delta racism. A story about a man whose parents never went to college and couldn’t vote, but whose own son is now a university president.

Not long after the snack bar incident, Rankins joined thousands of young men who were shipped to Vietnam. Although he couldn’t eat alongside whites in his own home town, the 22-year-old spent most of 1966 fighting for his country with the U.S. Air Force. Rankins served in the military police, working in intelligence during his 11 months in Vietnam.

Like many other Vietnam vets, his homecoming was a jarring experience.

“It was more tough coming back because over there everybody was looking over each other’s shoulder for help,” Rankins said. “It didn’t make no difference about what color you were. We were trying to survive and live and get back. You could tell the difference the minute you landed back in America.”

The “difference” was the racial atmosphere back home.

Once home, Rankins used his GI loan to finance his education at Mississippi Valley State University in Itta Bena. His stipend provided $40 a week, but he needed more to make ends meet. The only place that would hire him was the Greenville Police Department.

“I tried getting other jobs, but you know I couldn’t get hired as a veteran,” he said. “We had lots of segregation still going on in the state and most places would tell me I was overqualified for those jobs.”

So in 1969, Rankins joined a group of eight AfricanAmericans already employed on the police force. Back then, many of his fellow officers patrolled only black neighborhoods. They were explicitly told not to arrest white citizens.

Rankins said he would not stand for this. Someone, he said, had to “break the ice.” “It wasn’t that it made me feel so good or anything

like that,” Rankins said. “If I wore the same badge and same uniform, worked in the same code of law, then I should have the right to enforce the law.” Enforcing this law wasn’t without its lighter moments. Flashback to 1969 – when Rankins was a Greenville Police lieutenant.

At first, it looked like an adult game of hide-and-seek: grown men overturning chairs and checking every corner of the room. The place was Jim’s Café in Greenville. Late one night. Rankins and fellow officers were called in to search for a thief who had pillaged the restaurant many times.

Cafe owner Gus Johnson believed the culprit was still hiding in the restaurant, but no one could find him. So after the third sweep, the officers gave up and turned to leave.

“I looked inside the freezer, the refrigerator, I couldn’t find him. I said to myself, ‘This guy’s got away,’” Johnson said. “Rankins said, ‘He hasn’t got away, he’s in there.’”

Rankins pointed to a barrel of dirty cooking oil. The lid toppled off to reveal something unusual: two white eyes blinking up at him. Rankins and his officers pulled the man out, forcing the grease-soaked prisoner to walk back to the police station in handcuffs because he was too greasy to ride in the patrol car.

After nearly 21 years on the force, Rankins retired as deputy police chief. His addiction to public service in Washington County kept him retired for two days. In 1990, after a year working as a home inspector, he had had enough, so he accepted the urging of friends and ran for a spot on the county’s Board of Supervisors.

“If something happened at my [meat-packing] plant, then I would call for him because I knew he would take care of your business,” said Mike Gordon, a current member of the board. “He was a good policeman. I lived in his district and I helped him with his first election, to get elected to the board.”

That year six people ran and Rankins got 48 percent of the vote. He won a run-off with the candidate who came in second. He credits his victory to a law enforcement career that made him visible and trustworthy to both black and white citizens.

“People knew me, they really knew me,” Rankins said. “They knew I was an honest person, I was a family man and I was going to do the right thing regardless of black or white.”

Mark Hooker, Washington County engineer, first met Rankins as a police officer and echoes what many others say about the former board president.

“He was one of the old-time police guys. He toed the line, but in a nice way,” Hooker said. “He made you obey the law, but he didn’t beat you over the head with it. If you were speeding, he’d give you a ticket, but you wouldn’t get a ticket and a lecture.”

Rankins served on the board until retiring in 2012. But his career was not without controversy. Although he became board president after his first term, Rankins did butt heads with his fellow supervisors occasionally.

At one point, the board’s lawyer passed away and they needed a replacement. So Rankins brought in his friend, Willie Griffith, to take his place because he thought Griffith would do a good job. His fellow supervisors, however, said Griffith was too opinionated and unpleasant to work with, and they fired him.

Controversy aside, ask anyone in Greenville about Al Rankins and you’ll usually get the same answer: He’s a stand-up guy, someone who will do what he thinks is right despite what others think. “He always knew what was going on in the street. He knew what people were thinking,” former Washington County Administrator Tommy Goodwin said. “You’d see him in a different car about every two or three days. He’d say, ‘Well, that’s just the policeman in me.’”

— AL RANKINS

Rankins is now 68 and happily retired with his wife, Mary. Between rounds of golf and family get-togethers, he has a lot of time to reflect on his dual careers. One of 15 children, he is part of the first generation of his family to attend college. His son, Al Rankins Jr., recently became president of Alcorn State University.

Proud of his own children’s accomplishments, he’s now more prone to worry about his grandchildren. He agrees that race relations in Greenville have progressed – how else would he, an African-American, become the most powerful man in the county? But there is still work to do.

Although Greenville is 74 percent African-American, the town’s mayor is white. Whites and blacks give dramatically different answers about the state of race relations in their community. It just depends on whom you talk to – and that’s part of the problem.

In Mississippi, Rankins believes, there’s a wall of silence separating the races. No conversation means no racial progress. “All young folk get along,” he said. “They just play, little black kids and white kids just play. When they grow up, that’s where the problems start.” Design by Ellen Whitaker

Ida White deals with a class of active children. PHOTO BY CADY HERRING