jon on Nostr: “Years after retiring from a storied career with the Fire Department of New York ...

“Years after retiring from a storied career with the Fire Department of New York City, Wesley Williams, the most celebrated Black fireman in the nation’s history, occasionally made the journey to the graveyard. Williams had entered the FDNY in 1919 and eventually rose to the rank of battalion chief before retiring from the force in 1952. His ascent up the promotional ladder of the ethnically and culturally insular FDNY had not been an easy task. As one chronicler of his early career remarked, the struggles he faced “made Jackie Robinson’s stormy entrance into the Big Leagues look like a cap-pistol skirmish.” Still, “the Chief,” as Williams affectionately came to be known by Black firefighters across the country, always sought to turn the negative treatment he received into a positive. If anything, Williams’s resolve was fortified by his white company-mates’ racist bullying, intimidation, and attempts on his life. These staunchly racist firemen, from his earliest days on the job, as Williams later explained, “helped to make me a Superman in the fire department because of their prejudice.” It was these firefighters whose graves Williams visited. Well into his seventies, the Chief came not to pay his respects or to thank his antagonists for motivating him to become a better firefighter, but to urinate on them.”

— Black Firefighters and the FDNY: The Struggle for Jobs, Justice, and Equity in New York City (Justice, Power, and Politics) by David Goldberg
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