“When I saw that officer with his knee on George Floyd’s neck, it bothered me because 50 years ago that could’ve been me. It could’ve been me 20 years ago, and it could’ve been me today.” Today we’re having a conversation with someone who can shed incredible insight, history, and experience with a topic that nearly everyone around the world is focused upon: policing. Dr. Isaiah McKinnon, known by his friends as “Ike,” is the former Police Chief of Detroit, Michigan. He began as a patrolman in 1965. He was one of the first African Americans hired by the Detroit Police Department, where many precincts were still segregated. He was in his 20s and had just returned from Vietnam where he served as a machinist in the United States Air Force. He patrolled the city of Detroit during the rebellion of 1967, where he feared for his life—not from the people on the streets, but from some of his brothers in blue. He rose through the ranks, from Sergeant to Lieutenant to Inspector, fighting crime in a majority Black city, while enduring the sting of racism and discrimination within his own department. As a Sergeant and Lieutenant, he worked to expose and rein in the violent behavior of some of the law officers he supervised, only to be told by his supervisors to let it go. In 1994, he became Chief of Police for the city of Detroit. This was an incredible moment. Here was a man whose family fled the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama in the 1950s and came to Detroit for a better life, where as a teenager, he was mercilessly beaten by brutal white police officers in a department he was now in charge of. Chief McKinnon had his work cut out for him. Not only did he have to contend with a city known as the “murder capital of the world,” he had to dramatically reform the Detroit Police Department by dealing with a legacy of systemic racism and discrimination inside the DPD, and moving toward community policing and ending excessive use of force. He had to rebuild trust between the police and the community they were sworn to protect. What’s just as amazing is along the way, he earned his college degree, a master’s degree in criminal justice, and a PhD in Administration and Higher Education. It was all part of his belief that the more you know about people and the world they live in, the better you can understand and serve them. After retiring as Chief of Police, Dr. McKinnon went on to become the Deputy Mayor of Detroit from 2014 to 2016 and became a tenured professor at the University of Detroit, Mercy, where, after more than two decades of teaching, he retired in 2018. This conversation was recorded one week after a video showed Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on the neck of George Floyd until he died and people erupted in protest against police violence around the country and the world. What Chief McKinnon says about this event is chilling—even as a police officer, he said, even if he was in his uniform, as a Black man in America—he said, “It could have been me.” In this conversation, Ike shares his experience of being a Black cop in an organization and a system that for decades has engaged in brutal, violent, and too often deadly treatment of Black people—including himself. He offers insight from inside the police department and takes us on a journey from segregated Alabama to the streets of Detroit, where, as a teenager, he was beaten by a group of white police officers known as the Big Four, to what it was like to patrol a city during a major uprising, to what he did to reform the police department as Chief and what he would do now to make change possible. This conversation was such an incredible privilege. And one that was much needed to have. And to top things off, Professor Danielle McGuire returns for this conversation. You may remember Danielle from the conversation with Attorney Angela Povilaitis in episode 6. So without further ado, here is Professor Danielle McGuire and Dr. Isaiah “Ike” McKinnon in an incredibly emotional, powerful, and inspirational conversation. Dr. McKinnon has also authored three books North Between the Houses Stand Tall In the Line of Duty: A Tribute to Fallen Law Enforcement Officers from the State of Michigan Transcription Danielle McGuire: Well, it’s so good to be with you this morning Dr. Isaiah McKinnon. Dr. Isaiah “Ike” McKinnon: Thank you. It’s good to be here. Danielle: Thanks for joining me in this conversation. I really honestly can’t imagine talking to anyone else this morning who has, gosh, more experience, more insight, more knowledge, and knowhow about the crisis our country is facing right now than you. Dr. McKinnon: Well, thank you. Thank you. It’s really interesting for me to have lived through a great number of things in my life and so have seen other things with people and to be able to talk about it in this time. As we know, this is a very turbulent time. I’ve always said that about other things that have occurred throughout my life too and wonder if in fact things will get better or they get worse. As always that there’s—what’s the song from Monty Python—Always Look on the Bright Side of Life. Danielle: Yeah. You seem to have done that your whole life. I’m so excited to talk about it today because it really is—I mean I’ve studied a lot of people in history, and you’re definitely one of the most fascinating and most interesting. I’m so glad that we were able to meet in the last few years and that we’ve been able to work together. Dr. McKinnon: Thank you so much. Danielle: I’ll just say for the people who are listening. Dr. McKinnon and I met in our related work related to the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Detroit uprising. We were on a number of panels together and we just maintained our conversation over these past years sharing a lot of similar interest in race and interracial history and policing. He’s been a great help to me in writing my current book on the Algiers Motel incident which we’ll maybe touch on in this conversation. So yeah. It’s been incredible. I wanted to start by asking you about your parents. Like I said, I just reread your autobiography. It’s called Stand Tall, which I urge everyone to try to get a copy of. There’s a story in there about your father being a catcher. I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about your father and a little bit about that story. Dr. McKinnon: Oh well certainly. My father was born in 1900 in Union Springs, Alabama. My dad would always talk about not necessarily growing up, but also about his life and some of the things that happened with him. One of those stories that he would tell me is that he played baseball in the old negro league. Of course as this young boy growing up, you want to believe some of the things that your dad tells you, but not all of the things because I had never seen him play ball. My dad played in Montgomery and in Birmingham, and he’d talk about being a catcher. What really tipped this off for me was talked about being a catcher for Satchel Paige. The great legendary Leroy “Satchel” Paige who was known to be the greatest baseball pitcher ever. So my dad—I’m going to do my impression of my dad. He would say, “Boy, I’m going to tell you something. That boy Satchel Paige .” He said that, “It was hard catching him because the gloves that we had weren’t really tough like the gloves now. My hands would hurt.” My dad had these big tough hands. There was callous all over them. So he said, “Satchel, he could throw that ball. He could move it anywhere he wanted to.” So I’m believing this. I’m loving this. Not only him, but he said there was this other boy Booker T. Brunion who could throw harder than Satchel and he was a better pitcher than Satchel Paige. Well, I’d never heard of Booker T. Brunion. So anyways, in 1967 I’m a young police officer. The Harlem Globetrotters came to Detroit and they played at a place called the Olympia Stadium. Their guest at intermission half time was none other than Leroy “Satchel” Paige. So I was a police officer. I’m in uniform. I was assigned to that detail, and I said I’m going to go and ask him. So I went over to Mr. Paige and I said, “Excuse me Mr. Paige. Can I ask you a question?” He said, “Son you can ask me anything, but don’t ask me about my mama.” Of course, I wanted to start laughing. I said, “Sir, did you ever play ball with a guy in Alabama by the name of McKinnon?” Satchel Paige kind of wiped his head and he thought about it. He said, “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I don’t think so. The name doesn’t ring a bell to me.” I said, “Oh okay Mr. Paige. Thank you so much.” I turned to walk away. On my mind at that time was I was going to go back and tell my dad that you’d been lying to me all this time. As I started walking away, Satchel Paige he says, “Son, son, son. Just a minute. Just a minute.” So I stopped. He said, “McKinnon, McKinnon, McKinnon. Koda McKinnon.” That was my dad’s name. I said yes. He said he was a—and the term he used was hind catcher, which was an old country term for catcher. I said yeah, yeah. He said, “Boy I’m going to tell you something. Your daddy had these huge arms and these big hands. That man could play some baseball. He was one of the best catchers I’ve ever seen in my life.” He said, “I’m going to tell you something boy. If the color line had been broken at that time, your daddy would have been in the major leagues.” Of course, I almost jumped off the floor because he was reaffirming what my father had said to me all this time. Satchel Paige went on to tell me. He said, “Now, your daddy probably didn’t want to travel like the r
