‘Always a protector’: Family remembers first Black female captain on Wichita police force

Growing up, Antoinette Norris Woodson always thought of her older sister as someone she could go to for help with anything.

In fact, she doesn’t remember a time during those years when her sister, former Wichita Police Department Capt. Felecia Norris, didn’t talk about her desire to help people and, specifically, to go into law enforcement.

“It was probably partly because she just liked being bossy,” Norris Woodson said with a laugh. “No, she’s always been a protector, always protecting the little guy. In school, I used to see her sticking up for people. She was always that person.”

During a career in law enforcement that spanned over 30 years, Norris stuck up for a lot of people. She graduated from the police academy in Wichita in 1981 and in 2004 became the department’s first Black female captain.

Norris, who moved to Texas after retiring from the force, died last month at 68. Her celebration of life will take place Friday in Manvel, Texas, which is about a 20-minute drive from Houston.

Norris Woodson said she knew that her sister thought the world of the officers that she worked with and oversaw in Wichita. Relationships, she said, were always important to her sister.

“She would send congratulatory cards when things happened in her officers’ lives,” Norris Woodson said. “She cared about them as people. The department, and the people there, meant so much to her.”

In fact, Norris Woodson said that Norris even left money in her will to the Wichita Police Department.

When she found out recently that Norris had done so, Joanna Bradford, Norris’ friend for over 40 years and police academy classmate, became emotional. It just seemed, she said, like something Norris would do.

“That identifies what was important to her,” Bradford said. “She wanted to make sure there’s a means and a way to continue her work and some of the things that were important to her. For somebody to put money behind it, that’s rare.”

Family members described Norris as a gifted and driven athlete and student growing up, playing volleyball, basketball and softball during a time when girls’ sports were far less popular than they are today. Her father was a pastor, so the family moved a number of times.

In a 2004 story in The Wichita Eagle, Norris referred to herself as “a total Type A personality.”

While working toward a degree in criminal justice at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., she played on the women’s basketball and volleyball teams.

Though she graduated from high school and college in Southern California, Norris, the oldest of four children, followed along when the family moved to Wichita because her father got a job at Greater St. Mary’s Missionary Baptist Church.

Norris’ brother, Alfred Norris, still lives in Wichita. He said he’ll travel to the Houston area for the celebration of life.

“Felecia was the rock of the Norris siblings,” Alfred said. “I’m going to miss my sister. It’s a hard time, but we believe that God’s grace is going to see us through and get us through.”

Alfred said a running family joke was that even her siblings needed to make sure to verbalize her rank.

“When she started to get promoted, you couldn’t get away from calling her Sgt. Felecia Norris,” he said with a chuckle. “If you didn’t do it, you’d get that look from her, so we had to call her sergeant. She was private about what she did, like a lot of police officers are.”

Alfred said he’ll always remember the time when Norris was injured during a melee surrounding a planned Ku Klux Klan rally in Wichita.

“Her hip was broken, and she fell off a stage,” he said. “She had to have some major surgeries from that. She told me about a lot of war stories. She worked nights for a lot of years. I used to work nights, too, for the postal service, so I would often visit her at Hydraulic and Central and bring her some lunch.”

Alfred said he’s always been proud of his sister, not only for her police work on the street, but also for the multiple advanced degrees she earned. Norris also taught criminal justice for a time at Wichita State University and at Butler Community College.

As for being a trailblazer, Norris Woodson said her sister was aware of her accomplishments, but that she always just wanted to be known for how she performed the duties of her craft.

“She wanted to be recognized based on her actual work, not that she was a woman and not that she was a Black woman,” Woodson said. “Officer first, Black woman second. That was really important to her.”

In the 2004 story in the Eagle – which announced her promotion to captain – one quote from Norris referenced her time working in the department’s exploited and missing children unit. But it seems like it could also sum up her philosophy in life.

“It’s about helping as many people that you could get out of situations that were detrimental to their physical and mental health,” Norris said.