Winter Garden's first black police officer recalls his time serving the community

Charles King was the first black man to be hired as a police officer by the Winter Garden Police Department.

By Gabby Baquero
| 12:57 a.m. January 6, 2019

West Orange Times & Observer
News

WINTER GARDEN – For Charles King, becoming a police officer wasn’t exactly one of his goals in life, but he ended up loving every day of his three-year employment with the Winter Garden Police Department.

King, now 82, was hired in 1967 as Winter Garden’s very first black police officer. At the time, he was working for the Unidex paper factory in Orlando, and the city was searching for an African-American man qualified for a job in law enforcement.

Charles King worked as a part-time police officer with the Winter Garden Police Department from 1967 to 1970.

It was only a matter of time before King, a U.S. army veteran, was handpicked to fill the role. But it wasn’t until he witnessed an incident between the police and a citizen that he accepted the offer.

“One day Mr. (William) Maxey – he was the principal at Maxey Elementary School – and the city manager, Tom Sewell, they was wanting a black police officer,” King said. “And they were looking for a guy who qualified for that. So Mr. Maxey asked me about it, and I told him I’d think about it because at the time I was focused on Unidex all the way. And so, one day I was at the pool hall on Center Street, and I saw this black drunk guy; he was laying there on the porch of the pool hall. And these two police officers came through, and I didn’t like the way they put him in the car. And I made a complaint about it, and told him, ‘hey, you know, you all could have done a better job than that.’ And anyway, after I saw that, I went back to Mr. Maxey and then I went downtown and told them I would take the job. I thought I could probably handle that kind of thing better.”

During employment as an officer, the department’s chief of police was Charles Nelson, King said. And Nelson hired another black police officer named James Bland to become King’s partner.

King, who was born and raised in Winter Garden, said he never experienced any blatant racism growing up in Winter Garden. And when he was hired as an officer, he and Bland, who has since died, were treated with respect by their colleagues.

EARLY LIFE

King, who was born in 1936, resided with his mother and 7 siblings in a home located at 190 Hennis Road in Winter Garden until he was 27. After graduating in 1954 from Jones High school in Orlando, King was offered a football scholarship to a college he had no wish to attend. So instead, he worked at a local dry cleaner for two years and later enlisted in the U.S. Army, where he served for a total of three years.

When he returned to Winter Garden, he used his GI bill to pay for college, earned an associate degree in business administration and eventually found work at the paper factory.

Despite the police department’s desire for King to become a full-time police officer, King left in 1970 to return working full-time with Unidex, where he had been promoted to warehouse manager. He ended up working with the company for 20 years. King, who now owns a landscaping company, raised four kids and still lives with his wife of 55 years in east Winter Garden.

“It was new to them, the other police officers, because we was now on their turf,” King said. “But I never had no trouble from them because I was a black police officer. They never said anything. Nobody protested or said I shouldn’t work there. I never really had any racial problems in Winter Garden. The other officers were nice to me. They accepted me with open arms and they were professional with me and my partner.”

Together, King and his partner mainly patrolled the east Winter Garden area because that’s where King wanted to be assigned.

“People had never had the experience of seeing a black police officer before,” he said. “And so I wanted to be here in this part of town more than any other area because I wanted the black kids in this neighborhood to see a black police officer as much as possible. So I asked to be in east Winter Garden most of the time because that’s what I liked the most – letting the younger people know it was possible. I got a few chances to talk to the kids, and I liked educating them. I figured some education would help put them on the right path, and I would tell them to be good and mind your mama and your papa. I think seeing a black police officer benefited east Winter Garden more than it did any other part of town, and that was the most important thing for me. I just wanted them to know you didn’t have to be a white guy to be a police officer.”