L.A. Honors Black Firefighters’ History

Only those who were there would remember.

The way Wallace DeCuir entered the station and greeted his colleagues every morning, knowing they would ignore him.

The way Reynaldo Lopez kept his cool, even after a “Whites Only” sign was hung from the kitchen door.

The day someone smeared feces on Earnest Roberts’ pillow, and the other men watched.

And laughed.

In 1950s Los Angeles, these men fought fires, saved lives and slept under the same roof with white colleagues who did not want them there. From the start, Arnett Hartsfield wrote down details of the confrontations, saved newspaper clippings and filled photo albums with sepia-tone images of proud men in uniforms. Now, that history--and all the details Hartsfield has cherished--will have a home.

The African American Firefighter Museum--believed to be the first of its kind in the nation--will open today in what was once a segregated station at Central Avenue and 14th Street.

The two-day celebration also marks the 100th anniversary of African Americans in the fire service in Los Angeles. Retired firefighters, mostly in their 70s and 80s, will return to Central Avenue. Dubbed Old Stentorians, for the organization of black firefighters they created, the men will climb atop a fire rig and ride in a procession.

Scores of uniformed black men and women in the city and county fire departments--holding ranks made possible by these men--will march before them, living monuments to their sacrifices.

History usually abandons the specifics, smooths over personal moments and individual faces.

But Hartsfield is the caretaker of this history, holding tight to each man’s experience because the story is there in the fine print of their lives.

“It was the men in each station who persevered,” said Hartsfield, 79, a retired firefighter, attorney and professor of black history, who wrote “The Old Stentorians,” a history of the city Fire Department’s integration. “Each of our men handled the situation in a different way. And I’m so proud of them.

“I’m the griot, the teller of the story.”

L.A. County Fire Capt. Brent Burton, 32, is a griot in the making. He first read Hartsfield’s book as a 17-year-old Fire Explorer and never again looked at the job the same. Over the years he has met many of the old-timers, and now he can tell the stories himself, as if he had been there.

“There are things in that book that made me cry,” he said. “There were changes that had to occur for me to have the opportunity that I have today, and I just haven’t forgotten.”

And there are stories of courageous white firefighters who broke with their comrades and befriended their black colleagues.

City Fire Chief Bill Bamattre called the museum an opportunity to recognize the contribution of black firefighters and “the injustices they had to endure. It’s a springboard to highlight the need for tolerance and the value we place on that.”

The Old Stentorians have donated uniforms, boots, fire extinguishers, badges, helmets and photographs to the museum, a $1.9-million joint venture between the city and county.

For months Los Angeles city fire Capts. Gregory King and Daryl C. Arbuthnott have visited the homes of retired firefighters, videotaping conversations and capturing details from nicknames and rescues to their experiences during integration.

Videotaping a collection of Hartsfield’s photographs and newspaper clippings, Arbuthnott said: “I feel like I’m looking through my grandfather’s chest.”

Museum Called ‘Vitally Important’

A nascent effort is underway among black firefighters nationwide to formally preserve their past, to record the tumultuous race relations that were so much a part of that history.

“New York City never had segregated stations as such,” said John L. Ruffins, a retired New York City fire captain. “We were segregated within the stations.”

Ruffins has researched the life of Wesley Williams of Harlem, who in 1919 became the city’s third black firefighter. When Williams was assigned to Engine 55, the captain retired and the entire company requested transfers rather than work with him.

In Baltimore, Arthur “Smokestack” Hardy was one of the best-known chroniclers of black firefighters’ history. Hardy, who died in 1995 at 94, collected memorabilia and shared it with others around the country.

“He chronicled black firefighters all the way back to the beginning, to African Americans involved in the fire service in the 1800s during our enslavement,” said Oshiyemi Adelabu, president of the International Assn. of Black Professional Firefighters.

Los Angeles’ museum “is vitally important to us as a people,” he said. “It will give all of us a sense of pride and dignity to know what we’ve done and the contributions we’ve made.”

The history of the fire service is in some ways a history of human relations, said Firefighter Michelle Banks, a paramedic. Few other jobs require that people live together under the same roof. Lessons learned in the 1950s can be applied as other groups enter the department.

“Women are a prime example,” Banks said. “People feel we are heroes--and there are heroes. But when you look at the way a person views life, their personal characteristics, whatever is in society is reflected in the fire service.”

In 1952, when a number of African Americans purchased homes in the then predominantly white West Adams district, a series of bombs rocked the area. The home of a black firefighter was among those attacked. In 1955, the map of Los Angeles was still largely shaped by restrictive housing covenants, limiting where nonwhite people could live.

At that time in the city, every black firefighter worked in either Station 30 or Station 14, both on Central Avenue. Segregated stations were the twisted byproduct of the success of the city’s first black firefighter, George W. Bright, who joined the department in 1897.

After he was promoted, the city’s African American and Latino firefighters were brought together from other stations and put under his command. But he was not allowed to command white men.

With only two stations open to them in the 1950s, the number of black men in the department was severely restricted. A black firefighter could only become a captain when a black captain retired or died.

Still, it was one of the best jobs around.

“You had to be ‘Super Negro’ to get one of those jobs,” DeCuir said.

In the black community, being a firefighter meant being a part of society, DeCuir said. Members often joined Ma-po-fi, a prestigious black social club made up of mailmen, policemen and firemen.

In the city Fire Department, pressure to integrate came from inside and outside. The National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People accused the department of discriminating against black firefighters. In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the “separate but equal” doctrine in public schools, and the city attorney found that the ruling could be applied to fire stations as well.

John H. Alderson was city chief then. Highly respected, he pioneered the use of two-way radios and is credited with making the department one of the largest and finest in the nation.

Alderson also deeply opposed and fought the Fire Commission’s integration plan, calling it “sociological experimentation.”

In 1955, Alderson defended the department against claims that it discriminated, saying no man had asked for a transfer to a white station. Black firefighters responded by asking for transfers en masse.

Integration and Isolation

Just showing up for work was an act of resistance. In a paramilitary organization headed by a beloved chief who opposed integration, some white firefighters adopted a motto: “And then there were none.”

But no black firefighters were fired.

“Some of us wrote letters,” Hartsfield said. “Some of us smiled. Some of us sulked. . . . Each man fought his own way.”

Captains ordered the men to bring their own pots and food, and to eat separately from white firefighters. In some stations the black men were ordered to stay out of the kitchen while the other men ate and to shower only when no whites were using the washroom.

Each station had a “black bed,” and white firefighters did whatever they could to annoy its occupant. It would be placed in the center of the dorm, rather than along the wall like the others. Or it would be set next to a swinging door and banged at every opportunity.

Men with years on the job--who had come from the busiest stations in the city--were given the work of rookies: laying hoses, cleaning poles, scrubbing toilets every day.

Name calling and hazing came from the highest officer to the lowest rookie. And silence became a weapon. In that climate, even white men who were not hostile said only what was necessary to black firefighters--and sometimes less than that.

Usually one black firefighter was assigned to each shift, isolating him.

At Station 10, DeCuir said “Good morning” at the start of work each day, and each day no one spoke. It went on that way for months until one morning a firefighter asked--loudly enough for everyone to hear--why he kept speaking when he knew no one would answer.

First, DeCuir explained, a proper greeting was part of his upbringing. Second, he said, when he left the station he would be around civil people who understood such niceties.

“Third, I’m going to raise you to my level, before I sink to yours.” he said.

And then he smiled.

As ordered, DeCuir cooked for himself in his own pots. In his first few days at the station, when the others began preparing food, DeCuir also began making his meal. Seeing him, they put their food away. So DeCuir put his away. When they took their food out, he took his out until it became clear that they all would be very hungry unless they ate at the same time.

“I never ate by myself,” said DeCuir, 75.

Another black firefighter, a World War II veteran who requested anonymity, said he would “never speak to anyone unless it was in the line of duty. That included the captain. If he said something to me that was not an order, I’d ignore him completely. Nothing.”

Once, on the captain’s orders, he did talk. The captain wanted to know why black firefighters wanted to leave Central Avenue and be around white people when they could just as well stay put.

“You think I came out here to go to your house,” the firefighter said. “I don’t want to go to your house, and I don’t want you in mine. This is purely a matter of making a living, and you can’t run me off this job. You just can’t do it.”

The Old Stentorians remember Lopez as quiet, cool under pressure. He was only in his 20s when he was sent to integrate a station. Lopez put to use what he knew of Gandhi’s passive resistance to help him “tough it out.”

Only once did Gandhi’s philosophy almost fail him, but he exercised restraint. It was during a heated conversation in the washroom with a rookie.

“Here I was, a native of the city, been in the service, World War II in the North Atlantic,” Lopez said. “And here’s this punk who hadn’t been anywhere, and he’s telling me I had no right to be in this station working the job. I’m only human. Sometimes I fall short of my goals.”

The pressures on black firefighters extended to their families.

“We never knew from day to day what was going to happen,” said DeCuir’s wife, Myrtle. “You’d send them off in the morning not knowing.”

She never urged him to quit, she said, because like a proper greeting, learning to sidestep obstacles was also part of their upbringing.

Lopez’s wife, Donna, took his lunch to the station and sat with him in the kitchen while he ate, so he would not eat alone. “She relieved a lot of the tension,” Lopez said.

Reginald Ballard found solace in long phone calls to his wife from the station. Ballard was often in fighting mode. If white men cursed him, he cursed them back. If they threatened him, he threatened back. He wrote letters to the chief about what was happening.

“I’m not gonna go for that kind of stuff,” said Ballard, who was transferred many times. “Somebody’s going to know that I don’t like it.”

But all his wife could do was listen and try to console him.

“I know that it hurt her very badly,” Ballard said. “I tried not to burden her with things that were happening, but I did. I realized it, but I needed somebody to talk to. I know between the time I had those [telephone] conversations with her and the time I got home, it was terrible for her.”

Slowly, Change Comes

White firefighters who supported integration, or simply did not support the treatment of black firefighters, “were treated like us,” Hartsfield said.

“Captain [Edward] Barringer was a giant in my eyes,” Lopez said. “I’m convinced he would have achieved some rank beyond captain if he hadn’t stuck his neck out for us.”

One morning in the same station where nobody would speak to him, DeCuir met a white man who would become a good friend.

“He came over and got my coffee cup and went to the sink and poured it out,” DeCuir said. “Then he went to their coffee pot and poured me a cup of coffee and said, ‘Here DeCuir, have a cup of real coffee.’

“You can’t imagine what a tremendous stance he took in doing that. That was a show of friendship out in the open that few guys had the courage to do.”

In 1955, a week before Christmas, the battle between Alderson and the Fire Commission came to a head. Already Alderson had announced his plans to resign. But the commission relieved him of his duties and accused him of insubordination.

He had had defied the commission by ordering black firefighters back to Central Avenue and by refusing to “discipline firemen for acts inimical to the integration of Negroes into white companies,” the panel said.

Even with new chiefs and continued pressure, 1955 lasted a long time for black firefighters. In 1974, the year a consent degree to increase minority firefighters went into effect, only 45 African Americans were in the department.

Bamattre, who joined the department that year, recalls hearing whites make disparaging comments about black firefighters, but didn’t learn the history until he read Hartsfield’s book. This year the chief created a permanent historical society within the department.

Over the years, the Old Stentorians have watched as African Americans achieved ranks that were not possible in their day. And they have heard a few of their former nemeses apologize.

But time is an equal opportunity agent. The Old Stentorians have also rethought some of the actions they took when they were young.

“For some foolish reason, I was satisfied that I ended each [confrontation],” Ballard said. “Later on I realized I wasn’t winning anything. I should have spent my time studying instead of fighting them back, and I would have promoted sooner.”

Ballard retired as a captain. Lopez, 71, wonders why fate chose him to integrate a station, and if he could have served better by speaking up “instead of biting my tongue so much.”

Hartsfield calls the men giants who changed the department forever. Whenever younger firefighters ask him, “Was it worth it?” Hartsfield answers points to men such as Burton, Arbuthnott and Gregory King.

“Captain. Captain. Captain,” Hartsfield said. “Yes! The indignity has paid golden dividends.”