Site of racially-charged party will be home for African-American Firefighters Museum

OLD FIREHOUSE | A NEW START

When Henry Webster joined the Chicago Fire Department in 1950, there were only 66 African-American firefighters.

They were housed in separate companies with black firefighters commanded by white officers -- just like the Union Army during the Civil War.

Thirteen years later, Webster became the Jackie Robinson of the Chicago Fire Department -- one of four black firefighters to integrate a fire company. Although he was the "oldest guy there," Webster was put on the hand pump, a lowly assignment normally reserved for rookies.

"I fought for integration, and I was knocked on both sides -- black and white. They thought I was crazy. But I figured if we could infiltrate the system, we got a better chance of moving" up the ladder, said Webster, 84, who retired as a district chief.

"I tried to get people to put applications in for companies outside the 'Negro Belt,' as they used to say. They'd probably throw them in the waste can. But I kept plugging along and finally got some guys who said they were willing to take the chance."

Now Webster's trail-blazing tale will be told to future generations of Chicagoans after a City Council committee Thursday approved a 10-year, $1-a-year lease, paving the way for the Chicago Fire Department's African-American Firefighter Museum to be placed at Engine 100, 6843 S. Harper. That station was the site of a raucous 1990 retirement party captured on an infamous videotape played over and over again by local television stations.

It showed firefighters drinking beer, using racial slurs and mooning the camera. Fallout from the video led to the 1999 resignation of Fire Commissioner Edward Altman and his son, Edward Altman Jr., former head of the Fire Department's Internal Affairs Division.

African-American aldermen have called the station's conversion "poetic justice" for a Fire Department with a long and documented history of discrimination and racial incidents.

Webster, co-founder of the museum, preferred to use a fire-fighting analogy. "It's just like a burned-out building. You put the fire out, scrape the ashes and start all over again -- and make a positive out of it," he said.

Retired firefighter Morris Davis, 76, another prime mover behind the museum, joined the Fire Department in 1954 and waited 30 years to get his first promotion. That's even after saving nine people, including three children at once.

"I made 66 three times. That was my score [on promotion exams]. . . . I can't say it was fixed. But it made the law of averages look bad. You cannot make 66 three times on a test exactly. Either I make 65 or 64 or 67," Davis said.

To turn their five-year-old dream into a reality, Webster and Davis must raise enough money to rehab the 4,000 square-foot fire station and enclose its spiral staircase.

The museum -- featuring equipment, photographs, artifacts and memorabilia -- would become only the second in the nation to showcase the accomplishments of African-American firefighters.

"When Mr. Webster started out, he was walking. He's using a walker now. This is how long we have been struggling. . . . I have tears in my eyes because it took a long time," Davis said.

"It means so much to me because we worked so hard and we give so much to the city. . . . This is the harvest of our labor to get this museum -- something we can be proud of as a group. It gives you good self-esteem to know that this has happened and we can all unite together -- black and white."