Word: zelma
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Police Chief Zelma Wyche of sultry, deep-Delta Tallulah, La., looks and acts the archetypal Southern cop. There is the ample belly hanging over the gun belt as the massive, 6-ft. 2-in. figure swaggers down the sidewalk. There is the natty uniform with gold stars on a white starched shirt, a button open at the neck. And there is the amiable cockiness, the touch of braggadocio, the blunt cigar and the smile revealing two gold-crowned teeth. Only one anomaly destroys the stereotype: Chief Wyche is black...
...Tallulah seems an unpromising town for a black police chief, Zelma Wyche, 52, at first glance seems even more unpromising as an agent of amelioration. A Tallulah resident most of his life, he has been the town's most active and noisy agitator for racial justice. His attitudes have hardly altered in office. His mannerisms grate on white nerves. He hails white people by their first names, criticizes without a qualm Tallulah's white civic leadership and unabashedly seeks personal publicity...