Though the sliding pole was adopted worldwide, it didn’t end the harassment of Engine 21′s crew or quicken the department’s integration. To the contrary, when a Black fireman was assigned to Truck 17, the white firemen burned a Black man in effigy, the Tribune reported in 1907, writing that the white members were so against the idea of a Black colleague that “the firemen said they wouldn’t sleep in the same dormitory with him.”
