Thomas Mullen’s biography opens with the confession that while his neighbors near downtown Atlanta “suspect not a thing, he commits murders, spins wildly convoluted conspiracy theories, travels through time, [and] reinvents the past.”
The part of the past he has most recently reinvented is not far from his front door. His new novel “Darktown” centers on the story of the Atlanta Police Department’s first black police officers, hired on in April of 1948. But Mullen is quick to point out that his story is not about the integration of the APD because in fact, rather than real integration there was – as one character puts it – “a better kind of segregation.”
“This isn’t like a police version of Jackie Robinson integrating the Dodgers,” Mullen told “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes.
Read this story now for free
To continue reading, sign up for our newsletter and get unlimited access to WABE.org
You can select your preferences for news and local content. We will never share your email address. Learn how your newsletter sign-up will support WABE and Public Media
