In the mid-20"s there was a sudden upsurge of men of color joining the fire service and a the need for a larger station intensified.

The battle to make Engine 30 an all-black station took seven years. Engine 30 was a popular assignment and the white firemen threatened to strike. Racial tensions mounted. Never-the-less on April 16, 1924 the white firemen were removed and the black firemen from Hose 4 were transferred in.

Because the blacks were largely assigned to the two companies (five were in the fire prevention bureau and six assigned to supply and maintenance) the highest rank they could hope to achieve was captain. There were at that time only six black captains. White captains numbered 287. The department was satisfied with maintaining the status quo and could point to all-black companies in other large cities, notably New York, Chicago and Baltimore.

The black firemen and their community leaders had mixed feelings. Many of the older black firefighters preferred the system as it stood. Some saw it as an advantage, as an easier chance for their individual advancement. Shift-trading was informal, but even more the blacks feared the probable hostility they could encounter if transferred to a white company. Another proposal was put forward by the black community and many black firefighters: convert Engine 21 and 22 to all-black companies which would open up promotional opportunities for more captains and enable the department to form a battalion of all black companies led by black chiefs on each platoon.

A third approach was the one primarily espoused by the younger black firefighters who felt that the existing system was blocking them from promotions, even within their own stations. With all the positions in their own two companies already filled they had no place to go. They planned to make the LAFD their career and wanted immediate and total integration of the blacks at Fire Stations 14 and 30 into stations throughout the city. They found strong 14th Amendment Constitutional support for their ideas as well as the backing of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and Los Angeles' black-owned newspapers.
 

The fire commission approved Alderson's recommendation.
 

The fire commission immediately asked the city attorney to rule whether the Supreme Court and other decisions applied to the LAFD. The answer was in the affirmative and Alderson was asked by the commission to respond on July 1, 1954.

Alderson stubbornly reiterated his past position statements, while interjecting a new and headline-making statement: He would resign if the fire commission took over the assignment of personnel, transfers and other functions under his control.

"I will not remain to see it (the LAFD) torn down to a second, third and fourth rate department."
 

Beset by integration concerns, Alderson was growing physically and emotionally ill. The firefighters still called him "Big John" - but not to his face. It was clear that his was but a delaying action until full integration occurred with or without him as chief engineer.
 

The inevitable consequences were further complicated by some white firefighters who did not support segregation. They said they would not hesitate to work with blacks and were among the first to be ostracized by longstanding firefighter friends on and off duty. Several of them who openly challenged segregation were severely disciplined for insubordination and other charges.

As Alderson tested the mood of the firefighters by transferring blacks to all-white stations, he received little support from some chief officers and captains in the field, who frequently fueled the fires of hatred by their tacit encouragement of in-station opposition to integration. Their belief was that they were following the spirit of Alderson's policies and whatever means it took justified the ways. Apropos of the cliché: With friends like these, Alderson needed no more enemies.

                                                           The Hate Houses
Black firefighters and white firefighters unopposed to integration were transferred to what was referred to in the department as "punishment" or "hate houses". Most of the hate houses were located in Battalion 8 on the south side of the city in a mixed white and black area. Black as well as white firefighters in these hate houses took the full brunt of blatant and covert humiliations.

In those pre-integration stations where blacks were assigned, kitchen privileges were often denied and a steady stream of practical jokes, a firehouse tradition, turned vicious, unspeakable, degrading and deplorable. When six blacks were transferred to Fire Station 10, the campaign of day-and-night hazings and harassments pushed matters to the point of imminent violence.
 

                                                           The Stentorians
The Stentorians, an organization of black firefighters formed during the integration period, took their name from the Greek word, stentor (powerful voice). They adopted a non-violent stance and the slogan, "We only fight the department on integration." The Stentorians felt compelled to mount a round-the-clock patrol to guard the black firefighters at Fire Station 10. A television newsman volunteered to provide the Stentorians with special microphones to pick up and record the night-long hazings, so they could be broadcast during CBS Channel 2 news telecasts.

Other media as eagerly sought out stories which would illustrate racism in the LAFD. The department seemed all too eager to provide them. Two black firefighters and six white pro-integration firefighters were assigned to completely replace the all-white members of Fire Station 78 in the San Fernando Valley. Not one of the new assignees knew the district of commercial buildings, restaurants and high-value homes in the hills south of the station. Winding streets in the residential area were often difficult to find, even by the firefighters they replaced.

The media was tipped. Headlines told of the dangers of Station 78's complement of officers and firefighters totally unfamiliar with hard-to-find locations in their first alarm district. The stories resulted in precisely the perception the tipsters' intended: Station 78 assignments were made to prove that immediate, forced integration was resulting in poor fire protection and hazards to residents in that area.
 

                                                             December 15, 1955
Outraged by the steady stream of media and other reports of uncontrolled hazings and degradations in the fire stations and Alderson's summary transfer order, the fire commission voted to immediately fire Alderson on grounds of insubordination.

The commissioners had flip-flopped so many times on integration, that nobody knew where all of them stood on any given day.

Secondly, the commission would have sharply criticized Alderson if he had not acted, and one or more firefighters were injured or killed. And, finally, Alderson had already said he would retire on a date that was only two weeks away. By formally-charging the chief engineer with insubordination and going through the long process of firing him, the commission would only prolong and probably intensify the integration misery.

The commission, realizing the shallow thought that went into their impetuous action, quietly let the dismissal matter drop.
 

                                                                September 1956
By the following September and with comparatively little fanfare or difficulty, all black firefighters were transferred into 17 of the city's 91 fire stations. Hazings continued intermittently, but the long agony was over. All-black Fire Stations 14 and 30 were no longer segregated. They became integrated, too.

During the 30 years following Alderson's departure, memories of the integration nightmare faded, but never vanished. In the retrospective of time, longstanding questions can be answered and several observations are germane. The foremost question over the years: Could Alderson have avoided the years of agony that wracked the department? Yes, but with some equivocations. Alderson was a highly-principled person, albeit stubbornly unyielding. He believed in segregation and he fervently convinced himself that his legal obligations under the city charter prohibited assignments based upon race, albeit that some of the city's laws ran counter to the supreme law of the land.

If Alderson is to be faulted, the criticism must stem from his failure to take definitive action when he realized integration was inevitable. He should have taken that action before the problem got beyond his control. Those who knew him best say that Alderson's charisma among members of the department and his leadership strengths were such that the firefighters would have accepted integration, however unhappily, if only he had acted sooner.

It must be footnoted, however, that Alderson received precious little help or direction from most of the parade of Poulson-appointed fire commissioners during the integration years. Many of them were either segregationists themselves, or waffled on the subject. Many officers in Alderson's administration thought they were helping him but were, in fact, compounding his problems. Alderson received no help at all from the City Council. And he neither expected nor got any from Poulson, who publicly-postured integration, but privately-supported the segregation status quo.

History demonstrates that valuable lessons can be learned from events of the past. With the integration horrors over, there were longstanding and positive fallouts...For starters, it helped propel one of the most outstanding black officers who ever served the department, Jim Stern, to become the LAFD's first battalion chief on February 6, 1968. Shern, thoroughly imbued with the LAFD's high standards of fire prevention and fire protection, went on to become chief of the Pasadena Fire Department and one of the few blacks ever elected president of the International Association of Fire Chiefs.

Another upside of the integration aftermath, was that it reminded everyone of the fact that traditions die hard in the fire service. That the more than half-a-century of segregation tradition was broken in the relatively short period of time it was and without creating permanent rifts in the department, testifies to the resilience of the LAFD and its members.