{"id":7121,"date":"2023-01-16T21:02:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-17T02:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/legeros.com\/blog\/?p=7121"},"modified":"2023-02-11T09:14:18","modified_gmt":"2023-02-11T14:14:18","slug":"durham-black-firefighters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/legeros.com\/blog\/durham-black-firefighters\/","title":{"rendered":"Durham’s First Black Firefighters"},"content":{"rendered":"

This content first appeared in a Facebook posting on December 13, 2019<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Durham Herald Company Newspaper Photograph Collection, North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.<\/p>\n

Here’s a bit of hidden history of the Durham Fire Department. Below is a photo the Bull City’s first black firefighters. They were hired in October 1958 to staff a new Station 4 on Fayetteville Street that served the preserved predominately black Hayti neighborhoods.<\/p>\n

But as the subsequent clipping from 1949 notes, found last week, the City of Durham consider adding black firefighters nine years earlier. It details a special meeting between DFD, the City Council Safety Committee, and the Durham Committee on Negro Affairs. As expected, there were objections. [Then what happened? Good question. Future research topic.]<\/p>\n

Two years later, the first modern-era black career firefighters were hired in Winston-Salem, with eight reporting for duty at Station 4 on Dunleith Avenue. They operated as an integrated fire company but with segregated living quarters. They became an all-black fire company by 1957, and the entire department integrated by 1967.<\/p>\n

Greensboro hired its first black firefighters in 1958, for a new Station 4 and they staffed an engine company and newly activated ladder company. Raleigh hired its first black firefighters in 1963 and 1964, and six of the station staffed Engine 2 with an integrated crew and segregated living quarters.<\/p>\n

However, the budget document for the 1952-53 fiscal year contained a note from Raleigh Fire Chief Alvin Lloyd, that they were considering “the setting up of a Negro Company.” But he couldn’t find a way “in this budget to make the changeover at this time.” Chief Lloyd died in office in 1955, and his successor, Jack Keeter, took the reins.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Recommended reading:<\/p>\n