Margie Annette Hawkins Duty (August 28, 1922 – April 23, 2001) was an

African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...

law enforcement officer. She was first black woman to serve on the police force in

Houston Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 in ...

Biography

Duty was born in

Jennings, Louisiana Jennings is a city in, and the parish seat of, Jefferson Davis Parish, Louisiana, United States, near Lake Charles. The population was 10,383 at the 2010 census, a small decline from the 2000 tabulation. The city is 68 percent white. Jennings is ...

. Duty married Nathaniel Duty, who later joined the military, in

Shreveport Shreveport ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Louisiana. It is the third most populous city in Louisiana after New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Baton Rouge, respectively. The Shreveport–Bossier City metropolitan area, with a population o ...

in December 1945. Nathaniel was stationed at

Ellington Air Force Base Ellington Field Joint Reserve Base is a joint installation shared by various active component and reserve component military units, as well as aircraft flight operations of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) under the aegis ...

and the couple moved to

. Prior to joining the police force, Duty worked at the Houston Housing Authority. Duty started working as a police trainee in Houston in July 1953. Duty was not able to attend the

police academy A police academy, also known as a law enforcement training center, police college, or police university, is a training school for police cadets, designed to prepare them for the law enforcement agency they will be joining upon graduation, or othe ...

in Houston. When she joined, there had already been three black male officers, making her the fourth

on the force. She was assigned to the Juvenile Division, where there were fewer instances of prejudice than in other departments on the force. However, Juvenile did have two different seniority lists: one for white officers and one for black officers. There were also separate bathrooms and water fountains for black and white officers. Duty stayed in the Juvenile division as a plainclothes officer for twenty-three years. She later worked for eleven years in the jail. Duty retired from the police department in 1986. She died on April 23, 2001 and was buried in

Houston National Cemetery Houston National Cemetery is a United States National Cemetery in Harris County, Texas, near Houston. It encompasses only about half of which is developed. The cemetery had more than 111,000 interments as of 2021. It was listed on the National ...

References

Citations

Sources

External links

Margie Duty at Find A Grave
{{DEFAULTSORT:Duty, Margie 1922 births 2001 deaths African-American police officers Women police officers People from Jennings, Louisiana People from Houston Burials at Houston National Cemetery 20th-century African-American people