100 Year Battle to Integrate N.Y.C.'s Fire Dept - 27:16
The Long and Victorious Fight to Integrate the N.Y.C. Fire Department
with Ginger Adams Otis , Staff Writer
for the N.Y. Daily News and author of Firefight: The Century-Long Battle to
Integrate New York's Bravest
In 1919,
when Wesley Williams became a NYC firefighter, he stepped into a
world that was 100% white and predominantly Irish. Nearly a century later,
many things in the FDNY had changed--but not the scarcity of blacks. N.Y.C.
had about 300 black firefighters--roughly 3 percent of the 11,000
firefighters in a city of 2 million African Americans.. Decades earlier,
women and Blacks had sued over its hiring practices and won. But the FDNY
never took permanent steps to eradicate the inequities, which led to a
courtroom show-down between N.Y.C.'s billionaire Mayor, Mike Bloomberg, and
a determined group of black activist firefighters members of the Vulcan
Society. They also faced an insular culture made up of relatives who never
saw their own inclusion as favoritism. It was not until 2014 that the city
settled the $98 million lawsuit. At the center of this book are stories of
courage--about firefighters risking their lives in the line of duty but also
risking their livelihood by battling an unjust system. Among them: FDNY
Capt. Paul Washington, a second generation black firefighter, who spent
his multi-decade career fighting to get equality on the job.
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