Drylongso Awards bring honor
to Boston anti-racists
Kay Bourne
Karen Miller, the first female firefighter on the Boston Fire Dept.,
was fascinated with the job from her earliest years – and
angry about how the department seemed biased against black people.
In her acceptance speech at the Drylongso Awards, Friday, Nov. 4,
she recalled that growing up in the Orchard Park housing development
(now Orchard Gardens), she could hear the sirens from the fire house
nearby. “As kids we’d go over to look at the trucks,”
she recalls, “and the firemen would chase us off. But we saw
that when little white children visited, not only did the firemen
welcome them but even let them sit on the trucks.
“My mother is hearing what I’m about to say for the
first time tonight,” she continued. “In retaliation,
we kids would go up on the roofs of the project when the fire trucks
responded to our community and we’d drop rocks down on them.
“I’m not saying I’m proud of that way of dealing
with the department’s negatives but I am saying our work isn’t
done to make it an equitable Boston service. When I came onto the
department, my fellow workers put glass in my boots, my equipment
would disappear. But I did the job and I fought to bring more women
on. There are 19 female firefighters to date.
“However, the last two classes of graduates to the department
were all white, and we’re losing the African American firefighters
we have to retirement and injury. We need fire fighters who understand
the different cultures in this city, who can understand the different
languages that are spoken so I’m going to keep up the fight.
“Recently, I asked my 10-year-old son, who has seen all that
I go through, what he wanted to be when he grew up, and he replied,
‘I want to be the commissioner of the fire department,’”
Miller concluded with familial pride.
The awards sponsored by Community Change gives its prized recognition
annually to persons who fight racism, as their statement puts it:
“ordinary people doing extraordinary anti-racism work in Greater
Boston.” Other awardees Friday night at the dinner held at
Simmons College were Judy Tso of Aha Solutions Unlimited, Candelaria
Silva-Collins, director of ACT Roxbury Consortium, and Libbie Shufrow,
president and CEO of Boston Center for the Arts and a member of
Community Change since 1971.
Also receiving awards were Mukiya Baker-Gomez, community activist
and chief of staff to state Rep. Gloria Fox; Yawu Miller, senior
editor of the Bay State Banner; Dr. Vivian Dalila Carlo, assistant
professor, School of Education, Lesley University and consultant
to the WGBH-TV children’s show “Postcards from Buster;”
and Union of Minority Neighborhoods.
Gospel singer and educator (and former Drylongso awardee) Larry
Watson was emcee. The children of Ballet Rox performed several dances
from the upcoming Urban Nutcracker. The award was a framed Afro-Ethnograph
by Reginald L. Jackson that combines a photograph “The Shackle”
with a quotation from Bishop Desmond Tutu.
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