City’s 1st African American Firefighter to Get His Due

For 107 years, the remains of volunteer firefighter Sam Haskins have lain in an unmarked grave, his sacrifice to the city forgotten, his place in Los Angeles Fire Department history unnoticed.

Soon, that will all change.

A ceremony will be scheduled to commemorate Haskins’ death. A headstone will be placed on his grave at Evergreen Cemetery in Boyle Heights, where he was buried in 1895 after losing his life in the line of duty.

That marker will do more than give a long-dead firefighter his due; it will rewrite the history of the LAFD.

Fire Department documents have long recorded George Washington Bright as the first black member of the department. Bright was appointed as a volunteer in 1897 and, a month later, promoted to a full-time firefighter.

The records don’t mention Haskins. Recently, however, a persistent crime analyst, Joe Walker of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, began combing through birth and death certificates at the county registrar-recorder/county clerk’s office in Norwalk.

“I stumbled across Haskins while doing genealogy research for someone else who died that same year, and he caught my attention,” Walker said. The evidence he found includes 1895 newspaper stories about Haskins’ death, but no photograph; none is known to exist.

Two years before Bright joined the department, Haskins was already a volunteer firefighter at Engine Co. No. 2, on East 1st Street near Chicago Street in Boyle Heights. He was a 40-year-old single man and a “well-known colored politician” the 19th century newspapers reported.

An Unknown Life

Born a slave in Virginia in 1855, Haskins had arrived in Los Angeles about 1880 with a friend, George Warner, who was also a freed Virginia slave, Walker said.

Haskins’ existence had been unknown, both to the LAFD and to a firefighting historian, Arnett Hartsfield Jr., who was himself a pioneer in integrating the department.

Hartsfield, 84, a retired firefighter, attorney and civil service commissioner, led the fight for integration during his 20-year firefighting career.

“I doubted that Haskins could have been an early volunteer firefighter,” he said before seeing Walker’s findings. “I’ve been the historian for 62 years, and I would have recognized his name.”

Hartsfield was also surprised that an African American would have had the means to join the department back then. “Being a volunteer firefighter was very prestigious,” he said. “They had to buy their own equipment and clothes. I didn’t think a black man could afford it.”

Although Deputy Fire Chief Jimmy Hill, the highest-ranking African American in the department, has not seen Walker’s evidence yet, he said he was amazed at the revelation. “If we find any more information on Haskins, we will most certainly add him to the line-of-duty deaths,” Hill said.

How Haskins came to join the force remains a mystery, but the way he died is well documented in the newspaper articles.

On the cool evening of Nov. 19, 1895, Haskins responded to a 6 p.m. alarm, taking his position on the back of the wagon hauling the steam pump.

With the station’s mascot, Chief the dog, in the lead, the horse-drawn wagons raced along 1st Street, which was riddled with potholes and streetcar tracks, toward Main.

When the wagon Haskins was standing on hit a bump, he lost his balance and fell between the wheel and the pump. It took firefighters and passersby more than 10 minutes to take off the wheel to free him. They took him back to the firehouse, where he died a few minutes later.

Haskins was known for his willingness to help, newspapers reported, adding that he was never late when a fire alarm rang and that he had as many white friends as he did black.

“But for all his courage and sacrifices, Haskins has been all but forgotten,” Walker said.

Not for much longer, Hartsfield said.

“I’ve talked to most of the members of the Stentorians [a black firefighters organization] and they’ve agreed to pay for a [grave] marker,” he said. “And if they don’t, I will. Hopefully, a descendant of Haskins will come forth and fill in the gaps for us.”

Hartsfield is the caretaker of the African American Firefighters Museum and author of “The Old Stentorians,” the history of the city Fire Department’s integration. The museum, believed to be the first of its kind in the nation, is in the renovated 1913 Fire Station No. 30 at 14th Street and Central Avenue.

It All Began in 1886

The Fire Department officially went into service in 1886, with 31 paid firefighters and 24 reserve volunteers.

Bright, the man who was thought to have been the department’s first black member, was promoted to lieutenant in 1902, five years after his hiring. He was not allowed to command whites, however.

Instead, the department gathered all the black and Latino firefighters under Bright’s command at “The Hill,” a fire station in what was then an all-white neighborhood. Now it’s a parking lot across from Belmont High School.

In 1924, seven years after Bright retired, all the black firefighters were moved again, this time to Fire Station No. 30. More than a decade later, they were sent to Fire Station No. 14. Both stations, on Central Avenue, were in an emerging mixed-race neighborhood.

As time passed, circumstances didn’t get much easier for blacks in the department. With only two stations open to minorities in the 1950s, promotions were virtually nonexistent. A black firefighter could become a captain only when another black captain retired or died.

Pressure to integrate came from inside and outside the department. The U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision, which struck down the “separate but equal” doctrine in public schools, marked the beginning of the end for segregation: The city attorney advised officials that the ruling also could be applied to fire stations.

In 1955, the Fire Commission ordered the department to integrate. Chief John Alderson, who was from the South, objected, calling it “sociological experimentation.” The commission accused him of insubordination and relieved him of his duties.

Hartsfield remembers Alderson as a “great chief.” But he also remembers that putting out fires of bigotry was a lot harder than fighting real fires.

By 1955, Hartsfield had graduated from USC Law School, passed the bar exam, fought in a segregated unit in the Army during World War II and put in 15 years with the Fire Department. Then he and about 80 other blacks were sent to integrate all-white fire stations.

Racist Orders

“The captain met me at the door and gave me a direct order never to enter the kitchen when the white firemen were eating, to use my own pots and pans and to shower only when no whites were using the washroom,” Hartsfield said. “I was already an attorney, and every day I came to work and scrubbed toilets.”

The orders infuriated him; he wrestled with his conscience about whether to comply.

“Then one night, the Lord whispered into my ear, ‘You dumb rookie,’ and I swallowed my pride, [scrubbed toilets] and ate alone for the next six years, until I retired in 1961,” Hartsfield said. He had decided that humbling himself would pave the way for progress.

Firefighters learned to sidestep obstacles, each handling bias in his own way. Hartsfield recalled how Reynaldo Lopez kept his cool when a “White Adults” sign was posted at the kitchen door. Wallace DeCuir greeted his colleagues with a “good morning” every day, even though each day he was ignored.

Earnest Roberts had a nervous breakdown after someone smeared excrement on his pillow. Within a few months his hair had turned white from stress. But he stuck it out, putting in 34 years with the department.

Hartsfield recorded details of the injustices, saved newspaper clippings and filled photo albums with the record of these proud men who fought fires, saved lives and slept under the same roof as white colleagues who didn’t want them there. He also kept track of the stories of courageous white firefighters who broke with their comrades and befriended black colleagues.

It was during this period, in the late 1950s, that the Stentorians -- a Greek term for one who speaks out -- formed to increase the hiring and promotion of African Americans in the fire service.

By 1974, when the department was forced to comply with a court-imposed consent degree to increase the number of minority firefighters in its ranks, only 45 of the department’s approximately 3,400 firefighters were African American. Today, 388 of the LAFD’s 3,346-member roster are black.

Like the Old Stentorians, Sam Haskins’ pioneering work eventually opened doors for others.

He was buried in what appears to have been a segregated section of Evergreen Cemetery. Newspaper accounts of the funeral said it was well attended by city officials, including Fire Chief Walter S. Moore, who eulogized him; several police officers; and “30 permanent firemen.”

The LAPD gave Haskins’ relatives a police badge in the form of a star. The burial service was conducted by the Rev. John A.B. Wilson, pastor of First Methodist Church. The pallbearers included Haskins’ boyhood friend, Warner; black police officer Robert Stewart; and four white friends.

In the record of its 116-year history, the LAFD has listed 60 firefighters lost in the line of duty. Haskins makes it 61.