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NEWS & LETTERS, June 2002
Payback time for Black firefightersChicago—In April, Chicago Firefighters Union Local 2 elected James E. McNally as president with 62% of the vote. McNally was notorious for going around the station house and on fire calls in blackface to show his disgust with affirmative action programs in the Chicago Fire Department. He was also one of those white firefighters who were videotaped at an infamous racist firehouse party. Both the African-American Firefighters League of Chicago and the African-American Firefighter and Paramedic Support Group are asking the removal of McNally and elimination of automatic dues collecting by Local 2. In 1980, firefighters had gone out on strike for 22 days, during which 22 lives were lost. Mayor Jane Byrne sought out the African-American Firefighters League of Chicago members to cross the picket lines. They did not! Firefighters Union Local 2, to show how much they appreciated the African-American Firefighters League of Chicago members for not crossing the picket lines, placed Appendix G in the contract. Appendix G contained the goal that the Fire Department force be approximately 30% Black and 15% Hispanic, and to that end, at least 45% of recruits should be Black and Hispanic. Both African-American firefighter groups want African-American applicants to be allowed to go to the Fire Academy. Of 6,855 African Americans who passed the July 1995 Firefighter Entrance Exam, the first exam in ten years because of bias from beginning to end of the examination booklets, only 87 have been hired among 1,085 total hires as of February 2001. Of three women hired, all relatives of current or retired Fire Department personnel, none were African American. The City of Chicago has admitted in federal court that it has continuously and historically discriminated against African Americans since the inception of the Chicago Fire Department. We African-American firefighters and applicants need serious help. —George Wilfrid Smith Jr. |
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