Audio

  • 1998 Shooting of Two Capitol Police Officers

    Reaction to learning of the shooting deaths of two friends and colleagues.
    Interview recorded March 1, 2007 – View transcript | Deed of Gift

    Full Text: 1998 Shooting of Two Capitol Police Officers

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    Oh, I broke down. I was working overtime that day in the Rayburn subway. For some reason, the police officers always get the late stuff, and people and press were coming through saying ‘two of your police officers got shot over at the Capitol.’ So then we had to go stick our heads in the credit union window, so we could see on the television. I said, ‘Oh, my God.’ And then they started coming over, yelled two officers were down, and they didn’t know if they had the shooter or not. So they shut everything down at that point. And then later on, throughout the evening, that’s when they came over and told us who the officers were that had been shot. And I broke down. So some of my coworkers, they took over because they didn’t quite know them the way that I knew them, because I’d worked with these two officers all the way through.

  • On Being the First African-American Woman on the Force

    Reflection on what it meant to be the first African-American woman on the Capitol Police Force.
    Interview recorded March 1, 2007 – View transcript | Deed of Gift

    Full Text: On Being the First African-American Woman on the Force

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    I think when I realized that was when they asked all of us to get together to take our picture, so they could have a picture of their first females on the Capitol Police Department, and that was when I first realized that I was the first African-American female, which didn’t faze me at all because as time went by I didn’t really think about it. And then as time would pass, and they started to hire more females, and then they said, ‘You were the first African-American female.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I was, I guess.’ They said, ‘Do you know what that means?’ I said, ‘No, what does it mean? I have a job.’{laughter} Which I thought was good; I have a job, and I like doing it, you know, so it didn’t faze me at all. Even at the retirement party, it didn’t faze me until everybody started talking. I told my kids, I said, ‘I didn’t know.’ [My son] said, ‘Yeah, Mom, you didn’t realize that?’ I said no, because to me, I’m just an ordinary person that, okay, I don’t make a big deal out of anything. I try to always do my job and accept people for what they are and go with that.

  • Reflections on Being the Only Woman on the Day Shift

    Description of the reactions of and resistance by male officers.
    Interview recorded March 1, 2007 – View transcript | Deed of Gift

    Full Text: Reflections on Being the Only Woman on the Day Shift

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    A. JOHNSON:
    It was strange and different to be working around a lot of men knowing that you are the only female that’s on the day shift, and knowing that they really didn’t want to work with you, and then trying to hold a conversation—sometimes we didn’t talk at all. And then sometimes you might get somebody that wanted to talk about their job.
    K. JOHNSON:
    Can you provide an example of some of the resistance that you might have met?
    A. JOHNSON:
    Well, some of them would say, ‘Why would you want to be here? Wouldn’t you rather be at home with your child, cooking?’ I said, ‘No.’ ‘I don’t think you’d be able to handle this job.’ I said, ‘I think I can.’ So I had to really prove myself. And then as time went on, they saw that I wanted to do the job, and I could do the job, and I was willing to stand by them and do it. So it all changed. It was good, and they started to accept me.