David Goldberg
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781469633626
- eISBN:
- 9781469633633
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469633626.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter examines how Black working-class activism and the political ascendancy of Fiorello La Guardia created a small window of opportunity to join the FDNY that was seized by a small number of ...
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This chapter examines how Black working-class activism and the political ascendancy of Fiorello La Guardia created a small window of opportunity to join the FDNY that was seized by a small number of Black New Yorkers during the late 1930s and early 1940s. While relatively small, this influx of Black firefighters sparked racial backlash from the department’s overwhelming white majority, which attempted to formally institutionalize racism and racial segregation within the department. To combat this, New York’s Black firefighters formed the nation’s first Black firefighters’ organization, The Vulcan Society, in the early 1940s. The group emerged out of, and was a part of, the Black working-class oriented Black united front that developed in New York during the 1930s and early 1940s. Like similar Black labor organizations of the time, the Vulcan Society joined workplace and community-based struggles, and successfully mobilized to prevent the formal segregation of the FDNY.Less
This chapter examines how Black working-class activism and the political ascendancy of Fiorello La Guardia created a small window of opportunity to join the FDNY that was seized by a small number of Black New Yorkers during the late 1930s and early 1940s. While relatively small, this influx of Black firefighters sparked racial backlash from the department’s overwhelming white majority, which attempted to formally institutionalize racism and racial segregation within the department. To combat this, New York’s Black firefighters formed the nation’s first Black firefighters’ organization, The Vulcan Society, in the early 1940s. The group emerged out of, and was a part of, the Black working-class oriented Black united front that developed in New York during the 1930s and early 1940s. Like similar Black labor organizations of the time, the Vulcan Society joined workplace and community-based struggles, and successfully mobilized to prevent the formal segregation of the FDNY.
David A. Varel
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2022
- ISBN:
- 9781469660967
- eISBN:
- 9781469660981
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660967.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter charts Reddick’s rise as a major African American intellectual during the World War II era. As the curator of the Schomburg Collection in Harlem, Reddick helped organize Pan-African ...
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This chapter charts Reddick’s rise as a major African American intellectual during the World War II era. As the curator of the Schomburg Collection in Harlem, Reddick helped organize Pan-African Congresses alongside W. E. B. Du Bois and Kwame Nkrumah, became a force in the Double Victory campaign against fascism at home and abroad, collected black soldiers’ letters during the war, used the library as a base for political organizing in response to crises such as the 1943 Harlem Race Riot and those surrounding the Atlantic Charter, published pioneering articles on Africa and the US military’s evolving policies toward black soldiers, pressured the US government to recognize the military heroics of black messman Dorie Miller, and generally served as a public intellectual for black America. He also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to effect racial change and served as a member of the American Council of Learned Societies’ Committee on Negro Studies alongside Melville Herskovits and Lorenzo Dow Turner.Less
This chapter charts Reddick’s rise as a major African American intellectual during the World War II era. As the curator of the Schomburg Collection in Harlem, Reddick helped organize Pan-African Congresses alongside W. E. B. Du Bois and Kwame Nkrumah, became a force in the Double Victory campaign against fascism at home and abroad, collected black soldiers’ letters during the war, used the library as a base for political organizing in response to crises such as the 1943 Harlem Race Riot and those surrounding the Atlantic Charter, published pioneering articles on Africa and the US military’s evolving policies toward black soldiers, pressured the US government to recognize the military heroics of black messman Dorie Miller, and generally served as a public intellectual for black America. He also worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to effect racial change and served as a member of the American Council of Learned Societies’ Committee on Negro Studies alongside Melville Herskovits and Lorenzo Dow Turner.
