Harvard, Beverly (1950-)

Dorothy Moses Schulz

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 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 ...

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