Firefight (BOOK REVIEW)
Firefight
The
Century-Long Battle to Integrate New York's Bravest
by
Ginger Adams Otis
Palgrave
Macmillan / St. Martin's Press
Hardcover,
$28.00
288
pages, Illustrated
ISBN:
978-1-137-28001-5
Book
Review by Kam Williams
“In 1919, when Wesley
Williams became a New York City firefighter, he stepped into a world
that was 100% white... Nearly a century later... New York had about
300 black firefighters--roughly 3% of its 11,000--in a city with
2,000,000 African-Americans...
Decades earlier... blacks
had sued over the fire department's hiring practices and won. But the
FDNY never took permanent steps to eradicate the inequities, which
led to a showdown between New York City's billionaire mayor, Mike
Bloomberg, and a determined group of black activist firefighters...
At the center of this
book are stories of courage--about firefighters risking their lives
in the line of duty but also risking their livelihoods by battling an
unjust system...Based on years of on the ground reporting, Firefight
is an exciting blend of high-octane firefighting, critical civil
rights history and a grassroots struggle for opportunity."
-- Excerpted from the
Bookjacket
If
you want to get a good sense of why the Black Lives Matter movement
has caught fire, you might want to check out Firefight. This
inspirational opus by Ginger Adams Otis chronicles the ongoing
African-American struggle to join the ranks of New York City's
firefighters a century after it was first integrated.
How
ridiculous does it sound that there are only a few hundred black
firemen in a city of over 8 million? That shocking statistic calls to
mind Ferguson, Missouri where, following the shooting of Michael
Brown, it came to light that African-Americans were woefully
unrepresented on the police force and on the city council, despite
constituting the majority of the registered voters.
Consequently,
there's has been a groundswell of support across the land for greater
diversity in inner-city police forces. The hope is that when the cops
match the ethnic makeup of the community, there will be fewer cases
of officers shooting unarmed citizens.
But
why stop with policing? Don't all civil service jobs matter,
especially when young black males have an unemployment rate of about
50%. Just think, how much better off they'd be with equal access to
positions not only as cops, but as firemen, bus drivers, train
conductors, garbage men and so forth.
As
has often been said, freedom ain't for free, and what makes Firefight
a worthwhile read is how, in painstaking detail, it delineates the
bitter war waged in New York by the Vulcan Society, the tight-knit
fraternity formed by black firemen, to bring more African-Americans
into the NYFD.
Unfortunately, even after successfully making their
discrimination case in court, they found themselves up against a
mayor in Michael Bloomberg, who was willing to ignore a federal order
to desegregate coming from the Department of Justice.
In
that regard, Bloomberg's response was rather reminiscent of President
Andrew Jackson's to a Supreme Court decision in favor of the Cherokee
Nation. In the majority opinion, Chief Justice John Marshall had
concluded that the United States had violated a treaty made with the
Cherokee by authorizing their removal from the state of Georgia.
Nevertheless,
Jackson opted to ignore the injunction, saying, "Marshall has
made his decision, now let him enforce it." The President
subsequently proceeded to force the Cherokee and other tribes to
relocate west of the Mississippi in what historians now refer to as
the Trail of Tears migration.
Thus,
the Black Lives Matter movement would do well to learn from the
lessons of both the Native Americans and the black NYFD firefighters
in formulating a game plan for creating the colorblind utopia it so
optimistically envisions.
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