The Sheriff of Chickasaw County, "Dukes of Hazzard"
An almost-real depiction of what the Sheriff’s car looked like after tangling with Bo and Luke Duke.
Writer’s note: I’m celebrating these characters because they were allowed their chaos, their complexities and their messiness, in a way that Black characters aren’t always. I love them even when they suck.
I’ve been writing a lot about history, specifically Black history, this month, and one of the questions I ask every one of my subjects is about the concept of “better.” What does it mean when we say that things are better? It’s true, as one of the interviewees said, that Black people can eat at restaurants and sit at the front of buses, unlike when he was young, but there’s still White nationalists in national government saying the quiet parts out loud. Can we define “better” strictly by the initial standards of the fight or by the enduring legacy and whether that fight was really won? Is the truth of history seen from a past or contemporary lens?
What I’m asking is, should we be rooting for “The Dukes of Hazzard”’s Sheriff of Chickasaw County in his legendary fight to keep Bo and Luke Duke, their illegal goods business and their Confederate flag car out of his county? Even though the Dukes were the stars of the show and the law was never supposed to get ‘em, like Waylon Jennings sang, and their loss would violate the show’s freewheeling anti-authoritarian spirit?
YES. Rooting for this brother. Get them boys.
The Sheriff, who I discovered just this week had a real name that was Edward Thomas Little, was the only significant Black character on the show, which ran from 1979-1985. He was sort of the cooler counterpart of Hazzard County lawmen Roscoe P. Coltrane and his dipstick deputy Enos, in that he actually looked like he knew how to use his gun and walk upright. He had a terrible temper and was known to kick in the doors of his car whenever he failed to apprehend the Dukes. He was singularly focused on them, yet he was in the right, technically, as they were criminals running illegal property into his territory and stopping them was, you know, his job. (And yes, there are a million real-life reasons to criticize the police. But this brother was right.)
Also…and I speaking both as Little Leslie, who crushed on both Bo and Luke and was initially unaware of why a Stars and Bars-covered car named The General Lee was not something I should be rooting for, and as Older Leslie who is fully aware of that. Growing up as a Black pop culture kid in the 70s and 80s was a tricky proposition. You’re constantly being asked to ignore things that seem funny asides to some, but, in this case, are a celebration of a slaveowner who believed that Black people needed to “painful discipline” and were better off as slaves in America than free in Africa, and was willing to fight a war to make sure they stayed here. And by “them,” I mean my great-great-great grandparents. Yeah.
There are people, including the stars of the original series, who tell you that there was nothing racist about the show, and it was benign and innocent, and that we’re all doing Cancel Culture and PCisms and reverse racism and trying to ruin their childhoods. Let me be the first to say that if you’re childhood is so fragile that you can’t admit that there is nothing benign about that flag and about the car and the man it was named after, that’s on you. That’s facts, son.
So what does that have to do with the Sheriff of Chickasaw County? There was no way that the casting of actor Don Pedro Colley in the third season was accidental, in a show accused of celebrating Confederate history (let alone rooting for the criminals in the name of some vague sense of individualism). And there is no way that Sheriff Little, a Black lawman in a place that didn’t seem to have any Black people, would have looked at that car, with that name and that flag on the side driven by White boys who didn’t respect his authority, and not seen a personal challenge - TO MAKE THEM PAY.
For the culture. For the law. For America.
He never quite succeeded. But I was rooting for him.
ncG1vNJzZmiklai5qrHSramenaSav2%2B%2F1JuqrZmToHuku8xop2ihnmKwprjEm6marJmku267xWaaoZmfqbakecGlmJyjXaW8sXmXbWk%3D