Essay 4939

From The New York Times…

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Firehouse Dispute Raises Racial Tension in St. Louis

By MALCOLM GAY

ST. LOUIS — An African-American firefighter’s complaint that he found a stuffed monkey hanging by its neck in his firehouse last month has become a stark reminder of this city’s troubled racial legacy.

Although the Federal Bureau of Investigation recently ruled out a hate crime in its inquiry into the complaint, the incident has pitted many of the city’s black firefighters, who say the toy was meant to evoke a lynching, against their white colleagues, who say the monkey was simply hung up to dry after being found at a fire scene.

That explanation has not satisfied Capt. Addington Stewart, chairman of the Firefighter’s Institute for Racial Equality, a fraternal organization that represents all but a few of the department’s more than 300 black employees. “What I know is what I saw,” Captain Stewart said, describing a strap wrapped around the neck of a stuffed monkey dangling from a coat hanger. “I take that to be unconscionable.”

The episode might have remained an internal squabble were it not for the recent demotion of the city’s first African-American fire chief, Sherman George, which came after Mr. George publicly refused demands by Mayor Francis G. Slay to promote a group of mainly white firefighters. Many of the city’s black leaders have lined up behind the former chief, who resigned soon after being demoted.

In demoting Mr. George, some of those leaders said, Mr. Slay brought St. Louis race relations to a new low. Some started a petition drive in support of a mayoral recall.

“Sherman George was an African-American in one of the highest positions in the mayor’s administration — he was an icon,” said Alderman Terry Kennedy, chairman of the Aldermanic Black Caucus. “To push him out like that? You’re not doing anything but causing trouble.”

The current controversy has its roots in a lawsuit filed in 2004 by a group of black firefighters who raised accusations of racial bias in the promotion examinations for firefighters.

[Read the full story here.]