Mark O’Bannon’s first day on the job was emblematic of his 20-year career with the Chicago Fire Department.
O’Bannon, now a 47-year-old captain, reported to Engine 49 on the South Side as the first African-American firefighter in its 100-plus-year history.
“When I got in, one of the guys said, `What are you doing here?’ ” O’Bannon recalled. “And I said, `I’m the new firefighter.’
“And he said, `We were supposed to be getting O’Bannon.’ And I said, `I am O’Bannon.’ “
The story provides a glimpse at what some say is a culture of simmering racism and division within the Chicago Fire Department, a force of 4,800 split between whites and minorities, men and women, strikers and scabs, firefighters and paramedics, North Siders and South Siders.
Details of those rifts, usually confined to firehouse dinners and union meetings, were exposed to the public recently because of bitter contract negotiations and the disclosure of a seven-year-old videotape of a raucous retirement party at a South Side firehouse.
The 1 1/2-hour-long tape shows firefighters guzzling beer, exposing themselves and using racist slurs. Eighteen firefighters remain under investigation for their participation in the party–including three African-Americans.
The city’s inquiry is expected to be concluded once the City Council votes on the fire contract, a vote is now scheduled for Wednesday’s council meeting.
To hear most firefighters tell it, the hijinks in the videotape are extreme. They talk with pride and affection about their own firehouses, describing their colleagues as a second family.
But they also acknowledge that racism and drinking remain problems that typically manifest themselves in more subtle ways than those shown on the videotape.
Several minority firefighters, for instance, said that while they aren’t called racist names to their face, they get the “cold shoulder” from some of their white colleagues.
Some also think they face discrimination in the promotion process and that whites with clout get choice “fast-tracking” assignments, where they are likely to get noticed by higher-ups.
White firefighters, meanwhile, generally express opposition to affirmative action hiring and promotions on the grounds that they perform jobs in which a mistake could cost lives.
“When you’re fighting a fire, you need someone there who knows how to do their job,” said one white firefighter. “Not someone who got there by race norming.”
The fire department wasn’t integrated until 1968. A 1980 strike settlement called for a goal of a force with a 45 percent minority to be reached as quickly as possible. Currently, almost two decades later, the department makeup is 70 percent white, 20 percent African-American, 9 percent Hispanic and 1 percent Asian and American-Indian. There are 228 women among Chicago’s 4,800 firefighters and paramedics.
Much of the minority ire is directed at their union, Chicago Fire Fighters Local 2, which some say is a racist organization that has done little to represent their interests.
In 1989, the year before the firehouse videotape was made, a student intern from Loyola University prepared a report after working at union headquarters for six weeks. It noted rampant racism and sexism among Local 2 officials.
The report said the union was not only split among whites and minorities but also among North Siders and South Siders.
“Both North Side and South Side firefighters have their own social clubs, called the Gaelic (South Side) and Irish (North Side) Fire Brigades,” the report said.
Dan Fabrizio, current president of Local 2, said those groups are private clubs that, “we have nothing to do with.” He emphatically denied that the union under his leadership is racist.
Some of the racial tensions are exacerbated by lingering hard feelings from the 1980 strike. Many firefighters who walked the picket lines refer to themselves as “BOB,” for the Brotherhood of the Barrel, and still talk with venom about the “scabs” hired during the strike–many of whom were minorities.
The department developed an unofficial form of self-segregation in which some houses are nearly all-white and others nearly all-black, because after a year on the job, firefighters can “bid” to transfer to another firehouse.
“Every time we hit the streets, there is a chance we might not make it back, so there is a lot of stress that goes with that,” said an African-American firefighter stationed on the Far South Side, where most of his peers are black. “If you know that there are those with racist attitudes like what you saw in that videotape, who work within the department, would you want to be in a situation like that?”
Such feelings aren’t unusual among firefighters of all races, according to Capt. Nicholas Russell, head of the African-American Firefighters League.
“They segregate themselves out of what they perceive to be a bad situation or just for comfort,” Russell said. “Blacks, whites, Latinos, whoever–sometimes there is just a need to be around your own people.”
The fire department does not keep statistics on the racial composition of each firehouse, so the extent of the self-segregation can’t be measured.
Also unknown is the amount of drinking at firehouses. Although most firefighters acknowledge firehouse drinking occurs, they say it’s not as blatant as what was shown on the videotape shot during a retirement party.
“When you try to compare life in the firehouse with life in the firehouse during a retirement party, there’s a difference there,” said department spokesman Mike Cosgrove. “It doesn’t excuse it. But it doesn’t indicate this is daily life at firehouses in the city.”
Technically, a firefighter found in possession of drugs or alcohol while on duty faces one year’s probation and one chance to straighten up.
In spite of recent controversies, most firefighters praise their own firehouses and colleagues.
Russell lauds the firefighters at his racially mixed house at 548 W. Division St., in the shadow of the Chicago Housing Authority’s Cabrini-Green development.
“I could have gone to an all-black firehouse,” Russell said. “But the only way we are ever going to end the racism is to bring all firefighters together, giving everyone an equal chance. It works in my firehouse. We get along great.”
