Assistant Chief Battles Racism as Much as Fire

Hershel Clady had been a firefighter less than a year when he was sent to battle the Malibu Canyon blaze of 1970. He was with a lone engine company that came around a corner and met a firestorm, a giant wave of fire pushed by gusts of wind.

The only way out was to duck under it, like a bodysurfer caught in a huge swell. Clady and four others scrambled under the truck and waited to melt. “It was the most fire I’d ever seen in my life,” he said. “I thought we’d bought the ticket.”

All survived the experience, which only strengthened Clady’s resolve to succeed in his chosen career, he said. And succeed he has. Until this week, Clady, 51, an Inglewood resident, was one of only a few blacks to command a Los Angeles County Fire Department battalion. He oversaw Huntington Park, Bell, Bell Gardens, Cudahy, South Gate and Maywood. Recently, he became Los Angeles County’s second black assistant chief.

The accomplishment is particularly meaningful, Clady said, because he has spent most of his career fighting for equal rights for minorities and women in the Fire Department. Fewer than 10% of the county’s 2,500 firefighters are African-American, Clady said, but he regards this as a big improvement.

In the late 1960s, only six blacks were in the department, he said, and Clady happened to meet one of them on his rounds as a deliveryman for United Parcel Service. “I used to make deliveries to the station, and he stopped me and wouldn’t let me go,” Clady said. “He really challenged me to try out for the Fire Department.”

Clady did and was hired. “I was naive enough to believe there were no problems,” Clady said. He soon learned different. His efforts to recruit more blacks into the department were met with so much resistance, he said, that he and a few others filed a class-action lawsuit in 1972.

“Getting blacks into the department has been a long, drawn-out process. In many cases, racism played a part,” he said. “I’m not the type to not say it.”

In recent years, under Chief P. Michael Freeman, “we’ve had a dramatic change,” Clady said. “We are really moving in the right direction.”

For a while, Clady says, he was the object of derision among a small group of firefighters. “It was never outright, blatant name-calling. It was more subtle things. Like finding a snake in my locker. They called it joking. It was always called joking, joking, joking. This was happening to just me, so I was smart enough to know the difference.”

Clady educated himself before fighting back. “I attended and taught affirmative-action seminars and became knowledgeable about my rights. Armed with that type of information, it was hard to have someone make you feel unworthy.”

He attributes his drive to his parents. His father, a carpenter and union leader in Memphis, Tenn., and his mother, a homemaker, raised 11 children. “My mother is very religious--she always taught us to do what’s right. And my father told us to sacrifice for what we believe in, work hard and constantly prepare to achieve (our) goals.”

Clady and his wife raised their three children with the same values, he said. His oldest daughters are college graduates and professionals. His 15-year-old son “is a rapper,” Clady said, laughing. “I’m waiting for him to come out of it.”

He feels proud, he said, to be a part of the changes in American society that have made it easier for his children to succeed than it was for him.

Vivian Garnica is Miss Cerritos for 1993. Garnica, a Cerritos resident, is majoring in public administration at USC. Traviett Jernigan, a Cerritos College student, is first runner-up; Maria Toth, a University of La Verne student, is second runner-up.

Alfonso Morales, a student at Hosler Junior High School in the Lynwood Unified School District, was named 1992-93 Prosecutor of the Year in the county student mock trial sponsored by the nonprofit Constitutional Rights Foundation of the Los Angeles County Bar Assn. Last year, Joel Estrada, another Hosler student, won the same honor. Estrada and Morales were among 35 students from the Lynwood district who participated in the mock trial this year. The teams from Hosler and Lynwood High School ranked among the top 16 of 76 teams participating.

In the Whittier City School District, the Dexter Intermediate School mock trial team took first place. Sixteen students participated under the direction of teachers Jody Alcaraz and Lucile Langford. Parent Glenn Britton, an attorney, also assisted.