Institutional Racism

Rights era, Institutional segregation was upheld at the federal level by the Plessy vs.
Ferguson U.S. Supreme Court case decision which the court overturned in 1954.
Following this, cities consulted with their attorneys and as a result, Integration began.
This was replaced in turn by institutional racism, the practice of upholding the letter of
the law, but not the spirit, in an effort to prevent minority hires from gaining ground in
titles where they were disproportionately underrepresented, such as Police and Fire
depts, and in management positions.
Post-integration period
Around the country in the 1950s, blacks found common cause in challenging
employment discrimination, and the colored newspapers took up the cause.
Economically, jobs were becoming scarce for minorities during the post-war years as
returning servicemen reclaimed the manufacturing and factory base. Civil Service
looked to be a reasonable alternative to blacks returning from WWII service overseas
and black officers leaving the newly desegregated armed services. In Los Angeles in
the 1950s, the NAACP fueled an integration campaign in the California Eagle and
petitioned the fire commission to provide more jobs in the LAFD. When the Fire Chief
Engineer John Alderson attempted to integrate the department, the resistance to
integration created so-called 'Hate Houses' and resulted in the formation of The
Stentorians as a protective force of guardians to protect minority firefighters. New York
had previously experienced their own revelations when the Vulcan Society appeared
before the city council and demanded the elimination of 'the black bed' in firehouses for
the black firemen. At that hearing in 1944, the NYC council chambers filled with FDNY
brass on one side and black firefighters protesting the lack of promotional opportunities
and racial harassment on the other.
With that as the backdrop, integration began and segregation was replaced by
institutional racism, which took the form much the same way it did when blacks first got
hired before and during WWI. Blacks once appointed to a civil service position were
subjected to isolation, ostracism, outright hostility and separate quarters. After 1956, the
first black hires to the LAFD after integration unfairly failed to finish academy training.
The Vulcan Society in New York mentored many blacks but progress was slow, with
hiring not reflected in mirroring the population of the cities served until the passage of
the Civil Rights Act of 1964 when the numbers of minority hiring increased. The U.S.
Department of Labor in the 1970s began enforcing racial quotas during the Nixon
administration that mandated black hiring, but it was the lawsuits of the 1970s which
exploded the imposition of Consent Decrees across the country forcing the diversity of
the hard to integrate titles. In 1971 the Vulcan Blazers of the Baltimore, Maryland fire
dept filed a groundbreaking lawsuit that resulted in the appointment of blacks to
positions of officers up to assistant chief when the court ruled there had been
discrimination in promotions. Other minority groups followed their lead and also took to
the courts. In 2009 the City of Baltimore paid $4.6 Million to settle a case of
discrimination filed by minority policemen alleging discrimination. As other recent
lawsuits have proved, civil departments have held their heads responsible for cases of
institutional racism, an example of which is the case in 2007 of the LAFD Chief, William
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