Racist Chicago Firehouse to become African-American Firefighter Museum

The Chicago Sun-Times reports:

The scene of one of the most racially divisive chapters in Chicago Fire Department history will be converted into a museum honoring the contributions made by African-American firefighters, under a mayoral plan quietly introduced Wednesday -- a move one black alderman called "poetic justice."

Engine 100, 6843 S. Harper, was the site of a raucous 1990 retirement party captured on a now-infamous videotape played over and over again by local television stations.


It showed white firefighters drinking beer, using racial slurs and even mooning the camera. Fallout from the video led to the 1999 resignation of then-Fire Commissioner Edward Altman and his son, Edward Altman Jr., former head of the Fire Department's Internal Affairs Division.

Engine 100 went out of service in March, 2004. Now, it will become the new home of the Chicago Fire Department African-American Firefighter Museum, with displays, photographs, artifacts and memorabilia honoring black firefighters.

The all Democratic town of Chicago does the most amazing things.