Harvard, Beverly (1950-)

Beverly Harvard joined the Atlanta Police Department (APD) in 1973, a year before A. Reginald Eaves became the first African American public safety commissioner, when the department was a tense place for minorities and women. After a rapid rise through the ranks that slowed after she became a deputy commissioner, Harvard, who never expected to be a police officer, in November 1994 was confirmed by the city council as the country's first African American woman chief of a major city police department.

Harvard, born Beverly Joyce Bailey in 1950 in Macon, Georgia, was the youngest of six, four [Page 338]boys and two girls; she described her sisters as her best friends. Sheltered by her middle-class family, she attended local schools and in 1972 earned a bachelor's degree in sociology from Morris Brown College, a historically Black institution. In 1980, while in policing, she earned a master's degree in urban government and administration from Georgia State University.

Harvard joined the APD to win a $100 bet with her husband Jim, who had agreed with friends that a woman police officer would have to be big, strong, and boisterous, the opposite of his small, studious, and quiet wife. Harvard, who had expected Jim to support her view that any woman could become a police officer, had limited knowledge about the police and was unsure of the hiring process, but she set out to prove him wrong. When she joined the department, her plans were to remain only to learn police argot, constitutional law, and self-defense, but she was surprised to be able to help people, even on her first foot patrol assignment from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. in one of Atlanta's high-crime areas. After she became chief, she revealed that her husband had followed her and her partner around in his car because he had trouble accepting she was able to do the job.

After only a few years on patrol, Harvard began a rapid rise through the ranks; in 1978 she oversaw the police, fire, and corrections departments' implementation of an affirmative action plan. Named director of public affairs in 1980, she held the position during the resolution of Atlanta's child murder cases in 1981 and 1982, when Lee Patrick Brown was public safety director. Within barely a decade of having joined the APD and only 31 years old, she became the first African American female deputy chief with assignments in career development, criminal investigations, and administrative services. In 1983 she became the APD's first female graduate of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's National Academy, an executive training course that has served for many as a stepping-stone to becoming a chief. After a maternity leave in 1988 to have a daughter, Christa, she was considered for chief in 1990, when she was voted city government's woman of the year, but instead the position went to Eldrin Bell, who she replaced on an interim basis for 6 months before being named chief in 1994.