Tara Walker, 31, a high school girls basketball legend who scored 2,376 points in her Marist High School career, is now one of six women in the Jersey City Fire Department, and the first black female firefighter in the department’s 143-year history.
The diverse class includes two black men, four Hispanic men and an Asian man, city officials pointed out on Monday.
“Now today is really a great day because if you look at the 26 men and women sitting to my right, to your left, it really represents everything that is great about Jersey City,” Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop said at the ceremony. “It is a diverse class, it is a young class, it is a motivated class, it is a class of people that have dedicated and lived their lives here in Jersey City.”
The new class brings the number of Jersey City firefighters to 557. City officials said that 47 members have been hired since Fulop took office.
RELATED: Bronx Firefighter Danae Mines Becomes 1st Woman Featured In FDNY Calendar of Heroes
“Waited for it since I was a kid,” said Anthony Silleto, 26, after he was sworn in. “It’s great.”
Kevin Ramirez, 28, said he’s excited to become a part of the department and serve Jersey City.
“It’s a wonderful feeling, a great feeling,” he said. “We’ve lived our whole lives here. I’m happy, I’m excited to become a part of it and meet the rest of the family.”
The hiring of the firefighters was made possible by funds from a $6.9 million federal Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) grant. The grant is expected to fund up to 49 new firefighters in total.
The 26 firefighters trained for eight weeks at the Morris County Public Safety Training Academy.
article via forharriet.com and nj.com
Posts tagged as “African-American firefighters”
Danae Mines is an 11-year veteran with the FDNY and is one of New York City’s few female firefighters. Next March, Mines will also be the first woman the first woman featured in the FDNY Calendar of Heroes, even though she was initially told the calendar honor was only for men.
“I was told that it was all guys,” Mines, who is assigned to Engine Co. 60 in the South Bronx, told the Daily News. “They said if I made it in the calendar, I would look like a pinup girl.”
But that didn’t stop her from attending an open call and breaking the gender barriers. “I wasn’t going to let anyone tell me I couldn’t do what I wanted to do,” she said. “I was determined.”
Mines was surrounded by 100 men at the audition, and admits to feeling intimidated. “I was a little scared,” said Mines. “I was the only female.”
Mines’ dreams of becoming a firefighter began when she was just 10 years old after one of the city’s Bravest visited her school to talk about the job. But her family told her that she should consider another career, because only men joined the FDNY. “I had absolutely no support from my family when I wanted to come on the job,” she said.
Mines became an EMT and, despite her family’s requests, accepted a promotion to become a firefighter in 2003. And she hasn’t been able to stop her relatives from gloating about her ever since. “Once I graduated (from the Fire Academy), it was the complete opposite,” she said. “They could not stop bragging.”
Despite being one of 41 women firefighters in the department, Mines said she’s faced with no more challenges than any other man on the job. Mines didn’t end up looking like a pin-up model, as you can tell from the photo. The proceeds from the calendar goes directly to the FDNY Foundation to promote fire safety education for city residents, as well as new equipment for the firehouses. But Mines said she had a bigger reason in doing the calendar.
“I wanted my picture in the calendar so that young girls and young women can see me and know that they can do this job,” she said.
article via clutchmagonline.com
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Berkeley Fire Chief Debra Pryor is retiring Dec. 28, 2012 after 27 years in the Berkeley fire department. She was the city’s first woman firefighter, the first woman chief and the second black woman to head a fire department in the nation. (Doug Oakley/Staff)
BERKELEY, CA — It’s a drizzly cold Tuesday evening and Berkeley Fire Chief Debra Pryor is outside the city’s public safety building talking to a homeless man with two shopping carts piled high with possessions. The man loops in and out of lucidity, but Pryor doesn’t appear annoyed, pressed for time or afraid. She listens and talks to him, then politely wraps it up and approaches a second man to ask if he needs help deciphering the front desk hours of the police station.
Pryor, 51, is retiring Friday after 27 years in the fire department and 27 years of smashing race and gender barriers: she was the city’s first female firefighter, its first female fire chief and the second black female fire chief in the country behind Rosemary Cloud of East Point, Ga. (Earlier this year Oakland named Teresa Deloach Reed as its fire chief, making her the first black woman fire chief of a major metropolitan city.)
Eighty six of the 98 new firefighters who graduated Thursday were bypassed by a discriminatory 1995 entrance exam. Sharon Wright reports.
At age 53, Marvin Jones finally became the fireman he’d always dreamed of becoming. “It’s been a long struggle. I feel blessed. I’m almost closed to tears,” he said before walking across the stage in Navy Pier’s Grand Ballroom to shake hands with Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Jones was among 98 new firefighters who graduated Thursday, 86 of whom were overlooked by city officials who used discriminatory practices in evaluating applicant scores for a 1995 entrance exam.
“It is my hope that we never, ever make those mistakes again,” said Mayor Rahm Emanuel, stressing that the Chicago Fire Department should be as diverse as the city it serves.
After a series of back-and-forth legal battles over the years, Chicago was ordered in May 2011 to hire 111 black firefighters and pay a total of $30 million to nearly 6,000 clients listed in the class-action lawsuit known as the Lewis case.
Would-be firefighters who chose other career paths and those who chose to bypassed a “jobs lottery” six months later received cash awards of at least $5,000 per person.
Jones never took that payout, opting instead to follow his dream.
“We persevered. We’re here today. We’re graduating. We’re about to be Chicago firefighters,” said Jones, a postal worker for 33 years.
Article below reprinted from newsone.com:
The men and women who serve on the front lines as firefighters, rescuing citizens in harm’s way, should be saluted daily for their bravery. In one of the most-dangerous and selfless occupations in the world, firefighters risk their lives for the safety of others at a moment’s notice. Even though history has not been kind to the memory of African-American firemen, their contribution to firefighting is a significant one. Still, even with the most-dedicated research, it is difficult to ascertain who were the first African-Americans who took up the role as firefighters.
Several sources, including the richly detailed website from historian Mike Legeros, all point to the summer of 1817 as being the earliest record that Black firemen existed in New Orleans, La. Although Black men stamping out blazes could have happened before then, there is no real evidence available in capturing this historic truth. According to Legeros, 1821 and 1833 also show evidence of freed men joining firemen ranks in New Orleans, but like before, the records were poorly kept and the facts disjointed.
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