‘MAKE SURE HE COMES HOME’
Black state senator shares how family’s lessons about safe interactions with police get passed to next generation
He was a preteen, about 11 or 12 years old, hanging out with five friends near a candy store in East Chicago when the two police officers approached. It was a summer in the early 1960s, and Lonnie Randolph had already had the conversation with his stepfather — Charles “Frenchie” French — about interacting with police officers: don’t talk back and don’t get smart. His stepfather was well known in the community, so Randolph said police officers knew him as “Frenchie’s son.”
The candy store, located near the corner of Alexander Avenue and 150th Street in the Calumet section of East Chicago, was where kids liked to hang out, Randolph said. The two police officers, who Randolph said he knew, told the group to move along.
Randolph and four of his friends began walking away, but one didn’t move, he said. That’s when the officers — both of them black — began using force.
“We all moved on, but that kid didn’t and they beat him up. That’s always stayed with me,” Randolph said. “It was a teaching moment for me because it showed me the culture and abuse of power (of policing).”
In Randolph’s family, the conversation of interacting with police hasn’t been a one-time discussion. As Randolph, the longtime Democratic state senator representing East Chicago, recalls, “from time to time” he had the conversation with his stepfather just as he has had the conversa
tion more than once with his own children.
But each time, from generation to generation, the message has been the same: respect the police, address the officer as “sir” or “missus,” don’t talk back, don’t run and “don’t talk smart,” Randolph said.
As a young boy, Randolph, 70, said he was active — he participated in baseball, basketball and track — and always wanted to go to college.
“My hope was that if I was good enough at one of those sports, I could get a scholarship,” Randolph said. “(My parents) encouraged me to go to school. They encouraged me to do whatever I can to come back and do something in terms of helping the family and the community.”
Randolph’s son, Lonnie Randolph II, 37, went to Drake University and played semi-professional basketball for a team in Iowa before going to law school at Indiana University. Now, father and son have a law firm together in East Chicago.
About four years ago, the younger Randolph said he was at the airport in Charlotte, North Carolina, with his mother. They were headed back to Indiana from visiting his sister.
After walking through security, where his carry-on backpack was screened, the younger Randolph said he sat down to wait for his flight. Then, officers started to approach him and ask about his backpack.
The younger Randolph said he remained calm and answered the officer’s questions, just like his parents taught him. After a few minutes, he said between eight to 10 officers were standing around him and he kept asking why the officers were curious about his backpack.
Eventually, the younger Randolph said he was told he fit the description of a person with a suspicious bag. He asked what description the officers were given, and it turned out they were looking for an Asian man.
“It was a big scene. It went on for a few minutes,” the younger Randolph said. “I was respectful, but a little upset, too, because I just went through security.”
None of the officers standing around him apologized for the mistake, other than a black officer in plainclothes after the other officers left, he said.
“Even though I did my best to keep my composure, you’re pissed, you’re mad and you’re angry,” he said. “The No. 1 thing during … and even after (the interaction with police) you realize it was unfair and unjust.”
The elder Randolph’s plan growing up was simple: he wanted to be a professional baseball player and if that didn’t work out he’d become a lawyer, and if that didn’t work he’d be a businessman, he said.
After stints at Northern Michigan University and Indiana State University, Randolph graduated from Northern Illinois University in 1972. He went on to receive his law degree from John Marshall Law School in Chicago.
He lived in Chicago with his wife after graduating law school where they started raising their two children. In Chicago, the couple experienced racism on different levels, he said.
When his wife began looking for a new home in the Chicago area, the elder Randolph said the first question she was asked was about the color of her skin. During law school, he was the only black student in a juvenile law class and heard generalizations like “you people” aimed at him for his race.
Raising young children in Chicago, the Randolph said the talk of how to interact with police would come up during the family’s discussions around the dinner table.
Randolph said he taught his children that if an officer behaved inappropriately toward them to not react in the moment. He taught them there is a complaint process against police officers and that he’d help them seek justice that way.
Lonnie II said he remembers his father’s lessons about interacting with police, which included not making sudden movements and not talking back.
“Anytime you get pulled over, the main thing is you need to come back home,” Lonnie II said his father told him. “You don’t want to do anything — you try your best not to do anything — that might make it more likely that something bad can happen.”
Lonnie II has a 3-year-old son, Asher, and he is already thinking about how to discuss interactions with police with him.
“What will I say? How much will I tell him? Do I spoon feed it to him? Do I tell him all at once? At what age do I start to tell him about these things,” he said. “It’s definitely been on my mind more now than any other time. How that conversation goes, unfortunately I don’t know … but I do know it’s the conversation that must and needs to be had.”
When the time comes, he said, he will lean on what his father taught him: “I need to make sure he comes home.”