Volunteer fire companies were the norm in American cities and towns prior to the Civil War. Volunteer firefighters represented a potent swirl of masculinity, self-sacrifice, and republican virtue, securing them a heroic place in their communities. Elaborate uniforms and decorated fire engines both reflected and reinforced this special status. While they sometimes received financial assistance from local governments, such companies were largely independent, electing their officers and supplying their own equipment. Social clubs as well as civic saviors, these fire companies held fairs and balls, marched in parades, and trekked to visit fire companies in other cities. They also controlled the make-up of their membership by balloting new applicants. In Philadelphia, for instance, there were Protestant, Catholic, and Quaker fire companies; German and Irish companies; temperance companies; and even companies made up of single professions, like butchers. But Philadelphia had no African American companies.
This was not for lack of trying. The African American community of antebellum Philadelphia was one of the largest in any Northern city, with established cultural organizations—churches, benefit societies, etc.—dating back to the late 1700s. A volunteer fire company was another form of civic engagement and recognition, and a group of young men proposed the African Fire Association in 1818, as one account put it, out of “a pure and laudable desire to be of effective service.” Regardless of intent, this effort was quashed within weeks. White firefighters objected, even threatening to quit altogether. The city had enough fire companies, they argued. Another company at a fire would decrease water pressure, they claimed. Black Philadelphians would do better to organize a gutter-cleaning brigade, they suggested. African American leaders worried that white volunteers would simply refuse to respond to fires in their communities, and this threat doomed the nascent African Fire Association.
While African Americans found themselves excluded from firefighting in Northern cities like Philadelphia, some Southern cities such as Charleston relied on Black firefighters. Beginning in the early 1800s, African Americans, both enslaved and free, organized around auxiliary pumpers, called “ward engines,” meant to support white volunteer companies at fires. These ward engine companies were under the authority of white officers, but the men were issued badges and eventually uniforms and enjoyed some level of community status. They were even paid for their time assisting at a fire, though at a lower rate than their white counterparts, and enslaved men would likely have been expected to turn over their earnings. Charleston was notoriously flammable in the pre-war period, and hundreds of African American firefighters regularly worked to save the city from destruction, even as fires were often blamed on enslaved rebels and Black arsonists.