All Articles Tagged "black firefighters"
The City Needs You: FDNY Seeks Black Recruits
(Amsterdam News) — In certain realms, Vulcans hold a curious fascination for those of the Comic-Con faith. But in New York City, they are known to be a band of brothers and sisters in the fire department who not only protect and rescue city residents and property but also take on the legal fight when needed in order to ensure that a decent number of Black folks can get hired. The Vulcans scored a victory recently when they won their lawsuit determining that the FDNY must get more Blacks and Latinos on the job. ”It is our victory,” said Fire Captain Paul Washington, former president of the Vulcan Society. “We want as many Black men and women to take advantage of this as possible. This was a battle royale for the better part of a decade,” said Washington. “The city would not acknowledge the blatant discrimination.”
Chicago Ordered to Hire 111 Black Firefighters
(Chicago Sun Times) — The Chicago Fire Department must hire 111 bypassed black firefighter candidates — and distribute “tens of millions of dollars” in damages to 6,000 others who will never get that chance — a federal appeals court ruled Friday, upholding a landmark ruling. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in a 9-to-0 decision, that, contrary to the city’s contention, African-American candidates hadn’t waited too long before filing a lawsuit that accused the city of discriminating against them for the way it handled a 1995 firefighter’s entrance exam. On Friday, the Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that ruling and sent the case back to the trial court to implement what it called the “hiring remedy” the city has been stalling. Plaintiffs’ attorney Joshua Karsh said the decision means Chicago must hire 111 African-American firefighters and adjust their pensions as if they had been on the job since 1995. Six-thousand others will share “tens of millions of dollars” in damages, Karsh said.
