Black Firefighters Resign From Union in Racial Protest : Ku Klux Klan: County employees are upset over support of white captain who allegedly wore a Klan-style hood made of paper. Department is investigating.

Nearly one-third of Los Angeles County Fire Department’s 170 black firefighters have quit their union to protest its gesture of support for a white fire captain accused of wearing a simulated Ku Klux Klan hood in front of workers.

The resignations of union memberships by 53 firefighters is the latest episode in a troubled history between the Fire Department and its black firefighters, who have complained for years of prejudicial promotional practices.

The most recent controversy began last November, when the Los Angeles County Black Employees Assn. called for the firing of Capt. Michael Lee. The association claimed that while working at the department’s East Los Angeles headquarters, Lee cut eyeholes in a bag and put it on his head to resemble a Ku Klux Klan hood.

Lee referred all calls to his attorney, who said Lee was doing an imitation of a comedian known as “The Unknown Comic,” who tells jokes with a bag over his head.

County Fire Chief P. Michael Freeman immediately began an internal investigation that is expected to be completed next week.

In December, during their monthly meeting, members of Local 1014 of the International Assn. of Fire Fighters, which represents 2,500 members in the Los Angeles County, Orange County and El Monte fire departments, passed a motion supporting Lee.

The motion declared the local in “total” support of Lee “in his struggle with the department, and any other Local 1014 members regardless of race, creed or color or gender who are attacked by local media in the same manner that Capt. Mike Lee has been attacked.”

Dallas Jones, president of the local, said the motion was an expression that no judgment should be made on the conduct of any member before an investigation is completed.

William Ruffin, director of labor relations for the black employees association, called the motion “a direct slap in black people’s face. There’s no other way you can construe it.” Ruffin called Lee’s “Unknown Comic” defense “contrived.”

In the wake of the local’s motion, the Los Angeles Stentorians, an organization of black firefighters set up to serve as a support group and to increase black representation in local fire departments, circulated a letter urging blacks to resign from Local 1014.

Two weeks ago, a representative of black firefighters delivered 53 notices of resignation. The resignations do not affect the firefighters’ employment status.

Blacks in the county Fire Department have said that they rely more on the black county employees association and the Stentorians to represent them than on Local 1014.

Relations between Local 1014 and the Stentorians soured last March. The Stentorians were accused by the local of handing out questions and answers to a county hiring examination during one of the group’s tutorial sessions.

In response to that allegation, county Fire Chief Freeman threw out the test results of the 5,000 job applicants who took the March exam, and ordered a new test to be given.

Stentorian officials denied any wrongdoing and said the only document they gave out was a practice exam that had been distributed by the county’s personnel office years ago to aid those preparing for the exam.