Regina Rhyne Was Dane County’s First African American Female Deputy Sheriff: The Harshness of Being First
Regina Rhyne, in front of the Dane County Public Safety Building, is currently a certified substitute teacher with the Middleton-Cross Plains Area School District.
by Jonathan Gramling
I have known Regina Rhyne since the early 1980s when my family lived on Beld Street and Ryne lived up the street. Rhyne did some babysitting and we got to be friends. While Ryne had a heart-of-gold, she had a stern exterior at times. Her certain look could freeze you in your tracks. And she didn’t suffer injustice — perceived and real — kindly. She was before her time when it came to “Speak Truth to Power.”
Rhyne had something in common with Eugene Parks, the first African American elected to the Madison Common Council and an ardent civil rights advocate.
“People say that I’m the younger Eugene,” Rhyne said. “I miss Eugene Parks. Gene took a stand. You can’t know our struggle like we know our struggle.”
And like Parks, Rhyne was a “first” as the first African American female Dane County sheriff’s deputy.
While Rhyne is a transplant to Madison, she is clearly a Madisonian. No matter how rough things got for her, she wanted to live in Madison.
“In 1969, we moved into Bayview when it was first built,” Rhyne recalled. “We went to Truax. My dad was a musician. The jazz scene was big back then. That was one reason why I never left. There is a level of subtle racism in Madison and Dane County. We still have a long ways to go, socially and politically. I don’t want to see the south side get gentrified. I’ve been at Mt. Zion for almost 50 years. And it is important to me that I have a relationship with God and that has kept me safe.”
Rhyne was a kid growing up on the south side and she had a brush with the law that scared her straight.
“We did something we didn’t have any business doing like shoplifting,” Rhyne recalled. “I used to live on Badger Road and Park Street. There was Eagles. When they arrested us and took us downtown with the rest of the kids, I had never been in trouble before. The guy they had me in the room with, he was well-known. He picked up the statute book. He explained to me why what I had done was illegal. He dropped that book and when it hit the floor, I jumped. And I told him, ‘You will never see me here again, unless I am on your side, the other side.’”
Rhyne has always had public service in her heart and she made up her mind that the best way that she could serve was as a Dane County deputy sheriff.
“I went to what we called MATC from 1977-1980,” Rhyne said. “And I was the first Black female to graduate out of the newly created Police Science department. I wanted to be a police officer who tried to come out and help people. I love people. I always have since I was a kid. At that time, Jim Hood was the dean of the Police Science division. I got hired by the Dane County Sheriff’s Department in 1984. I was the first Black female deputy sheriff ever in 1984, I want to say. We were in a class with two Black females and perhaps five Black males. I think that was the largest number of Blacks ever. At the time, Sheriff Jerome Lacke was in charge. He didn’t like people of color.”
Being a deputy sheriff is hard work. Rhyne got enough grief from the community at large.
“I remember coming from Sun Prairie,” Rhyne said. “A young lady had done something. Another person and I took her down to the jail. And all of the way, from Sun Prairie to the City County Building, all I heard was the n-word. We took her into booking and did the fingerprints. They put her in the jail They said, ‘Someone forgot to take her belt.’ They told me to go in there and take her belt off. I went in there. I put my knee between hers and she was up on the wall. I had to tell here, ‘Move and you’re going to solitary.’ The training was superb. As old as I am, I can say I can beat a man. I’ve never been a physical person to fight. I fight with my words.”
And there were times when she didn’t get the back up that she needed for doing her job.
“I went out on the road for two months,” Rhyne said. “I remember patrolling Stoughton Road. I would give people tickets because they were coming in and the speed limit changes dramatically. And they told me, ‘Stephenson — at the time I was Rhyme-Stephenson — you are writing white people tickets.’ They were speeding and I was doing my job.”
And there was one particularly evil inmate who came through.
“I remember the first time that they placed me in the jail, it was a tempestuous time,” Rhyne said. “There was a guy named Joseph Paul Franklin who had committed a murder and they had to bring him to the county to be arraigned. He was mean and dangerous. He was doing stuff. He coughed in our face. They told us to be careful. It was scary being in the old jail in the City-County Building. Everything they say about that decrepit, old is true. It was a great experience. Some of the inmates used the n-word. Sheriff Lacke didn’t like me. He said I wouldn’t make it. I did 17 months.”
As a part of their training, the deputy sheriff’s had to spend some time in a prison cell so that they would know what it feels like. It was an experience that made Rhyne tougher.
“I also remember a training they had up there,” Rhyne said. “They put me in a jail cell all by myself. They put all of the other women in another cell. I had a book, toilet paper and a blanket. And the simulation was so that we would know how to treat the inmates when we had to work inside the jail. Why they put me by myself, I don’t know. I guess that was a sign there. It was cold in there. I read all of that book. I told them again, ‘You won’t see me on that side of the cell. I’m not going to be in the cell unless someone does something to my family or me.’ It was a good experience. But I didn’t like being by myself. I don’t know why I was singled out.”
Rhyne tried to treat the inmates like human beings. They were doing their time, but that didn’t mean she had to be cruel to them. Perhaps she was before her time.
“They reprimanded me for treating the inmates like I was supposed to treat them,” Rhyne said. “It always bewildered me. ‘You told me to treat them like human beings and I am treating them like human beings. I’m giving them a newspaper or whatever it was.’ And then they reprimanded me. I couldn’t do anything right. And I have people come up to me now who say, ‘I remember when you were up in the jail. You were always kind to me. You always treated me like a human being. And I appreciate that. And I say, ‘Thank you. I wanted to treat you like I would have wanted to be treated.’”
Rhyne almost made it out of her training when she got some bad news.
“I forget who was the mayor and the county executive back then,” Rhyne said. “I enjoyed my experience. I got all the way to 17 months. I did my EMT classes. All I had to do was take the exam. Before I was to come out of the academy, they fired me. They said, ‘Give me your gun. You are done.’ They didn’t really need a pretext to fire me. That’s just the way it was. I did my job. I did my EMT. I didn’t have any marks against me. To this day, I don’t have a criminal background. I’m proud of that.”
Rhyne was devastated. In spite of her best efforts and living through racist behavior on both sides of law, she was let go from a position that she had dreamed about and she had no other dreams.
“It broke my heart when they fired me,” Rhyne said. “It was devastating. I went into a deep depression. I contemplated suicide. But I had children. I was a single mom raising a boy and a girl on the south side of Madison. And it was also against my religion. That’s just not something that we do. I made it through.”
Rhyne went back to school and started over.
