Baker won sheriff’s post in ‘78, set mark for service
RALEIGH - When John Baker Jr. was a child, his father was hired as Raleigh’s first black police officer. The son vowed that one day he would become sheriff.
It was a pretty heady dream for an African-American boy growing up in the segregated South during the 1940s and 1950s. After a career as an NFL defensive lineman, Baker achieved it.
He was the first elected black sheriff in North Carolina since Reconstruction.
Baker, 72, died in his sleep Wednesday morning, said his pastor, Marion Robinson of St. Matthews AME Zion Church. Robinson said Baker had been sick for several months. He declined to discuss the nature of the former sheriff’s illness.
Baker, a hulking man, gravel-voiced but soft-spoken, was sheriff for 24 years, from 1978 to 2002. Along the way, he modernized the Sheriff’s Office. He started the county’s gun permit system and formed the first sheriff’s homicide unit. He also hired more patrol officers and was instrumental in getting the $56 million Wake Public Safety Center built in downtown Raleigh.
Before becoming sheriff, Baker was a college football All-American at what is now N.C. Central University from 1954 through 1957. He was selected in the fifth round of the NFL draft by the then-Los Angeles Rams and went on to play 11 seasons with the Rams, the Philadelphia Eagles, the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Detroit Lions. He was elected to NCCU’s inaugural Athletic Hall of Fame in 1984.
Ferocious on the field
Herman Boone, 72, a college teammate, said Baker “terrorized all of North Carolina” during his high school football days. Baker carried that ferocity with him to college and pro ball. But off the field, Baker was “just the nicest guy God ever created,” said Boone, of Alexandria, Va.
“He would take your head off in a moment’s notice and at the end of the play give it back and warn you not to come that way again,” Boone said. “Off the field, other than his size, you would have never known he was a football player. He was like a big teddy bear.”
In 1964, Baker’s ferociousness on the field helped produce an enduring image of the game — New York Giants quarterback Y.A. Tittle kneeling on the field with blood on his helmetless head, after being tackled by Baker.
After his football days, Baker took his calm, tenacious spirit to the political arena. His first foray into politics came in 1975 when he served as an aide to U.S. Sen. Robert Morgan. One year later, he worked as deputy state chairman for Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign.
Blacks in politics
When Baker was elected sheriff in 1978, he followed a vanguard of young and ambitious black politicians who were elected during the post-civil rights era, including Raleigh’s first black mayor, Clarence Lightner, in 1973.
Still, when Baker was elected, the idea of a black lawman serving in a predominantly white capital city in the South was a “major rallying point” for African-Americans in Raleigh and throughout Wake County, said Ralph Campbell, a former state auditor.
“I still have the T-shirt and campaign button around here somewhere,” Campbell said. “The button was shaped like a star — which everyone cherished — that said ‘Baker Backer.’ After that, John became a political icon.”
His tenure was not without controversy. Baker, a Democrat, clashed with the Republican-dominated county Board of Commissioners during the 1990s, particularly over the size and budget of his office.
In 1996, Baker ran newspaper ads accusing county commissioners of not heeding the public’s concerns about crime by refusing his requests for more deputies. Baker wanted the county to pay for the ads; the commissioners refused, saying the ads were a political swipe at them. The News & Observer eventually sued the county and Baker to collect $7,600 for the advertisements. Baker and the commission settled their differences and the bill was paid
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