Old Tensions Resurface in Lawsuit Over Promotions

David A. Fahrenthold, Wash. Post, Mar. 28

The Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department, roiled by disputes over race for much of the 1970s and 1980s, is the target of a lawsuit by a group of white officers complaining about racial discrimination.

When the District achieved home rule in the 1970s, the fire department was a predominantly white agency in a majority-black city. Some black firefighters recalled overt discrimination in their first years, when black firefighters had to sleep in separate beds marked “C” for “colored.”

Then, the home rule government, especially under Mayor Marion Barry, tried to recruit and promote more black firefighters.

White firefighters resented those efforts, saying that now they were being passed over, and the department wound up with two very vocal unions, one predominantly white and the other black.

Both whites and blacks sued, alleging that they had been discriminated against because of race. Throughout the 1980s, the fire department was in litigation over promotions, hiring or affirmative action plans.

The courts found both white and black firefighters were victims of city policies. In Marvin K. Hammon v. the District of Columbia, the federal courts found in favor of black firefighters who alleged discrimination from 1960 to 1984.

In three cases from the 1970s and 1980s, courts ruled in favor of white fire department officers who said they had been passed over in favor of black candidates.

In recent years, the Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department has had much less racial division. In the early 1990s, it restarted promotions that had been halted because of lawsuits.

Then, last month, the 23 white officers in the department filed suit in U.S. District Court, alleging that they were discriminated against because they were not promoted to battalion chief in 2002.

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