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The long fight to integrate NYC's bravest and finest

By KEN NASH

Firefight: The Century-Long Battle to Integrate New York's Bravest by Daily News reporter Ginger Otis and One Righteous Man: Samuel Battle by Daily News editorial page editor Arthur Browne are two books that detail the beginning of the integration of two of the New York City 's best paid civil service jobs — the firefighters and police.

After Samuel Battle moved to the city from the Jim Crow South for more opportunity, he was inspired to become a policeman by many articles in the city's civil rights press. He passed the civil service test. But unlike white candidates, he needed the political pull of the civil rights community on Tammany Hall to be appointed. Entering as the sole African American in a police department known for its brutality and corruption, he was met with a cold wall of silence and non-cooperation.

The tide of white hatred toward Battle slowly eroded and turned after he saved a white cop's life in a street fight with African Americans in 1919. Then he was given special undercover assignments by the police commissioner, many involving Prohibition offenses.

But despite his high test scores, promotion came surprisingly only with the election the new mayor, Jimmy Walker, and with it another milestone, supervision of white police.

During the Depression, African Americans increasingly protested police violence and misconduct and many blamed Battle's involvement in a system that tolerated such abuses. Under Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, the scant hiring of African American police increased . But there was still discrimination, so Battle joined in organizing the Guardians Association, a fraternal departmental organization of Black police to which he was elected president.

The New York Fire Dept.'s situation was similar.

In 1919, Wesley Williams scored extremely high on the written and physical tests but still needed political pull to become New York City's third African American Firefighter. In addition to a wall of silence and constant harassment, he was assigned to a Black bunk that no white fireman would use.

Williams survived his trial by fire, gaining wide but never official acclaim for his heroic rescues. Only after he won the departmental boxing championship - besting a white officer - was he widely accepted by white Firefighters.

Scoring high on the promotion test, he was promoted to lieutenant with supervisory responsibilities. But over the years, the number of Black firefighters grew very slowly and conditions for new Black Firefighters resembled Williams' initiation.

Williams became president of the newly formed Vulcan Society in 1944 to fight discrimination and increase hiring on the job. Yet, by the millennium, New York City had only about 300 Black firefighters - roughly 3 percent of the 11,000 Firefighters in a city with 2 million African Americans - because of an unfair civil service test and a lack of recruitment efforts. This led to a courtroom showdown between Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the Vulcans who had to battle not only city government but also an insular departmental culture that never saw their own inclusion as favoritism.

It was not until 2014 that the city settled the $98 million lawsuit that increased opportunity of African Americans, Latinos and women Firefighters.

Browne's and Otis' histories detailing institutionalized racism in the police and fire departments through successive city governments to the present day show the roots of problems we are still grappling with. Black unemployment is twice the national average even when candidates have similar backgrounds, and the FDNY's hiring improved only because of the Vulcan's agitation and a government lawsuit. The NYPD continues to be lacking in its recruitment procedures. And it is struggling with racialized police misconduct, which is endemic throughout the country, leading to nationwide protests that say Black lives matter.

Ken Nash recently retired as librarian of the DC 37 Education Fund Library.