From Black Power to Class Action

This chapter focuses on the influence that the Black Power movement and rise of employment discrimination litigation had on the Vulcan Society and Black firefighters across the country. The dialectical relationships between the civil rights and Black Power movements and the Vulcan Society’s old and new guard eventually transformed the organization and its objectives and helped facilitate the IABPFF, a national Black caucus group formed to combat discrimination and increase Black representation in — and community control of — urban fire departments. Both the IABPFF and the Vulcan Society embraced “separatism without separation,” and used their “outsider status within a white-dominated institution,” as well as shifts in employment discrimination case law, to “reveal the inner workings of institutional racism” within the FDNY and urban fire departments more generally. This shift was instrumental in the fight to establish legal remedies to address institutionalized racism and its impact on the racial composition of urban fire departments and became the primary method used by the Vulcan Society and the IABPFF and its local affiliates to make fire departments more representative of and responsive to the people and communities they served

Postwar Civic and Civil Rights Unionism

This chapter charts the growth of the Vulcan Society in both numbers and stature during the postwar era. Led by Wesley Williams’ protégé, Robert Lowery, this second generation of Black firefighters rapidly expanded the organization’s size, civic engagement, public profile, and influence within the FDNY and Democratic politics by the early 1960s.

Free at Last?

This chapter chronicles the remergence of the Vulcan Society during the late 1990s and early 2000s and charts how the landmark case, U.S. v. City of New York, came to fruition. In particular, the chapter focuses then Vulcan President Paul Washington and the Vulcan Society’s various allies who after decades, helped bring the issue of racial discrimination in the FDNY before the courts. It closes with a discussion of the scope of victory secured through this case, as well as potential areas of struggle in the future.

The Last Bastion of White Male Privilege

This chapter looks at the Black experience in the FDNY during the last quarter of the 20th Century. During this period, the City, fire department, and the fire unions all vigorously resisted efforts by the Vulcan Society and the United Women Firefighters to address structural and institutional racism and sexism. Black representation, after growing slightly and then stalling in the mid 1980s, receded slowly and steadily as the century closed.

Introduction

In a historic 2012 decision, Eastern District Court Judge Nicholas Garaufis ruled that the New York City Fire Department (FDNY) had knowingly and intentionally implemented and maintained racially discriminatory hiring processes throughout its history. The case, United States and Vulcan Society v. City of New York...

A Black Face in a High Place, Fire Commissioner Robert O. Lowery

This chapter focuses on John Lindsay’s appointment of Robert O. Lowery to serve as the FDNY’s Fire Commissioner during the onset of one of the most tumultuous periods in the department’s history, “the War Years.” Within the department itself, the first half of “the War years were characterized by a highly racialized, contentious, internal struggle for institutional control that escalated throughout John Lindsay’s and Robert Lowery’s two terms in office. Efforts to reform departmental race relations, increase minority access and representation, and maintain fire protection levels were complicated by budget problems, escalating racial, political, and cultural conflicts; rising workloads; labor militancy; and white backlash.

Fighting a Good Fight

This chapter examines how Black working-class activism and the political ascendancy of Fiorello La Guardia created a small window of opportunity to join the FDNY that was seized by a small number of Black New Yorkers during the late 1930s and early 1940s. While relatively small, this influx of Black firefighters sparked racial backlash from the department’s overwhelming white majority, which attempted to formally institutionalize racism and racial segregation within the department. To combat this, New York’s Black firefighters formed the nation’s first Black firefighters’ organization, The Vulcan Society, in the early 1940s. The group emerged out of, and was a part of, the Black working-class oriented Black united front that developed in New York during the 1930s and early 1940s. Like similar Black labor organizations of the time, the Vulcan Society joined workplace and community-based struggles, and successfully mobilized to prevent the formal segregation of the FDNY.

The Bravest of the Brave

This chapter explores the small number of pioneer Black firefighters that entered the FDNY from 1898 to 1930, as well as how these men survived with dignity despite encountering heinous acts of barbarity and racism in the FDNY.

The Early Origins of Ethnic Insularity and Racial Exclusion in the New York City Fire Department

This chapter discusses how the FDNY’s cultural of insularity evolved during the 19th Century as the department shifted from volunteerism and became professionalized. The chapter also chronicles how Irish Americans came to dominate the FDNY and used this workplace culture to consolidate and maintain an ethnic niche within the department.