(NOTE: Special thanks to Sister Mary Beaubien in the SHU Archives for her help with the information for this story).

How do you want to be remembered? Larry Richardson, the first African American police officer in Adrian in 1968. At the time, he described his thoughts.

“I feel that we all have to make some kind of indentation on this earth; to do some little bit of good. Hopefully, I’ll be remembered as a man who cared, a man who tries to do some good.”

And do well, he did. Richardson comes from the cotton picking fields in Arkansas. Ten hours a day picking cotton in the sun, only to go home and complete chores around the house. He said he stumbled upon Adrian by accident. However, once he was convinced by relatives to stay, he was able to earn a two-year criminal justice degree from Jackson Community College while working in a nearby factory. From there, he went on to receive a bachelor’s degree from Siena Heights.

He was not only the first black police officer in Adrian, but he also was the driving force behind the criminal justice program at Siena.

“I guess I’m a person who fights for other people’s rights,” Richardson said in a Daily Telegram article from 1986. “But a leader, I don’t think so. Martin Luther King and Jackie Robinson, they were leaders.”

While he said he always dreamed of becoming an FBI agent, he instead ended up working his way through the Adrian Police Department until he became the first black man or woman to hold the county-wide seat of sheriff in 2000, according to the Daily Telegram.

He continues to reside in Adrian today. If not for him, criminal justice may not have been a program offered at Siena. He also served on the SHU Board of Trustees.