BREAK DOWN
Black women tell of struggle to rise in ranks of city
There was nothing subtle about the pushback when Toni Washington — a Black woman — landed her first job with the East Point Fire Department in 1995.
“It was in my face, a combination of both sex and race,” recalled Washington, now the fire chief for the city of Decatur, Ga. “There was no hiding how people felt. When we went into the firehouses, the men wouldn’t dare talk to us. How they felt, they were unashamed to show it. It was by any means necessary to push us out.”
Twenty-one years into the new millennium, Washington is now in her 12th year atop the department. But it’s lonely at the top of the ladder of success: She is one of just six active Black female fire chiefs nationwide, with six others in retirement.
The numbers are similarly daunting throughout the firefighting ranks: Barely 4% of the nation’s 300,000 smoke-eaters are female, with their colleagues comprised of about 78% non-Hispanic white males.
The numbers often add up to a lack of Black and woman applicants for the jobs filled for generations by white men, said Carrie Edward-Clemons, now in her sixth month as president of the International Association of Black Professional Firefighters.
“There’s various reasons people are not breaking down the door,” she said. “They view the fire department as in the past, a male-white dominated profession. A lot of people don’t want to take that on in their lives.”
The 53-year-old firefighter became the first woman to hold the IABPF position, the latest groundbreaking move in a 22year career that started in the Flint, Mich., fire department — although she bemoans that things are not so different these days.
“It kind of went from where things were in your face to now, where they figure out a way to do it in secret or underground,” said Edward-Clemons, Flint’s first female deputy fire chief. “It’s a challenging part of this job ... It’s a struggle every day with attitudes and perceptions.”
FDNY veteran Regina Wilson became the first female head of the Black firefighters’ Vulcan
Society in 2015 and just celebrated her 22nd anniversary on the job. Her new bosses took Wilson across the street from the firehouse to a local bar when she first arrived in 1999, unaware that she didn’t drink, smoke or eat meat.
“And I’m not a man,” added Wilson, 51. “This was foreign territory for all of them. They had to try and figure me out. Was I an angry black woman, finger-waving? Was I bougie? There’s never going to be 100% acceptance, some just don’t want you there. There are some who