Service and Sacrifice: Remembering Black men in uniform lost on 9/11

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Although 24 years have passed since the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, New York City’s dedicated families and communities that lost loved ones on that fateful day continue to honor their legacies.

“Part of our duty as a memorial museum is to commemorate and honor the 2,983 people that were killed on 9/11 and in the 1993 bombing,” said Dylan Williams, the 9/11 Memorial & Museum Curatorial Assistant. “All these people had rich lives with their own kind of hopes and dreams and aspirations, things that they were working on, things that they were doing, things that they would look forward to. And so we use artifacts that were donated to us to tell that story.”

The 12 Black firefighters lost but not forgotten

There were 343 New York City Fire Department (FDNY) firefighters who died on 9/11 with 12 of them being Black firefighters. Their names were as follows: Gerard Baptiste, Capt. Vernon Cherry, Tarel Coleman, Andre Fletcher, Keith Glascoe, Ronnie Henderson, William Henry, Karl Henri Joseph, Keithroy Maynard, Vernon Richard, Shawn Powell, and Leon Smith Jr.

“Within the walls of the firehouse, we each have a responsibility to ourselves to protect each other because of one common denominator, life. I worked ten years in Brownsville, East New York, and Bedford-Stuyvesant, and all brother firefighters know that death in fires does not discriminate,” wrote Cherry, in a letter found in his locker before the tragedy. The letter was donated by his family to the 9/11 Memorial & Museum and highlighted in its brief documentary from last year.

These twelve lost were also members of the FDNY’s Black Vulcan Society. The fire department’s first Black member, William A. Nicholson, was relegated to tending to the horses for Engine Company 6 in 1898. After enduring four decades of harrowing racism within the department, Black firefighters gained recognition and rose through the ranks. Wesley Williams, the city’s first Black battalion chief, founded the Vulcan Society for the over 50 Black firefighters employed in 1940. The organization combatted entrenched discriminatory practices within the FDNY, fought vociferously for diversity among its ranks, and created a sense of community and refuge for its members.

The Vulcan organization remains strong. This year’s Vulcan president, Jonathan Logan, and current firefighters invited the families of 9/11 firefighter victims to their annual Brooklyn memorial service at the First Quincy Community garden.

“Our loved ones are gone, but we’re still trying to keep their memory alive,” said Irene Smith, the mother of Leon Smith Jr., who founded the FF. Leon W. Smith Jr Foundation to give out student scholarships in his honor. She recalled that her son often experienced the hardship of being a Black firefighter in the city over the course of 19 years on the job, but he was determined to be treated with respect and dignity.

She championed a street renaming on Hancock Street in Brooklyn in his honor. She said part of her ritual is going to her son’s firehouse for a memorial ceremony and attending a lunch with family members of other Vulcans at a nearby diner. They then head over to the annual garden memorial service. She added that it’s also free to place a tribute for 9/11 victims in The New York Daily News memorial section, which she does twice a year.

Smith is very close with Vulcan Society family members like Monique Powell, who lost her brother Shawn Powell, and Leila Joseph, who also lost her brother Karl Joseph on 9/11. Powell’s brother has been immortalized in a co-naming of Monroe Street in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. Joseph spearheaded the FF. Karl Henri Joseph Education Fund Inc to honor her brother, who was a young probie when he passed.

“We draw strength from each other,” said Joseph. The Joseph family and friends may go to the site in Manhattan, attend a memorial mass at church, but ultimately, every year, they meet up at the Vulcan ceremony. “For me, it’s a comfort to see other people every year, seeing some of the other families.”

Vernon Maynard, the older brother of Keithroy Maynard, added that his family tries to make the best of every day but says there is definitely a void. He recalled being excited to vote that morning in 2001 with his brother, and hoped that he would come home initially after he heard about the plane crash. He said that the Vulcan Society and its community have been a major support for his family. “Up to this day, I have to keep going. Sometimes going back and forth to work brings the emotion,” said Maynard. “It hits you when you realize.”

A Black Co-Pilot

A lesser known name from the 9/11 tragedy is Leroy Homer Jr., the Black First Officer of United Airlines Flight 93, who was co-piloting one of the planes the morning of the hijacking. Homer was a fighter pilot for the armed forces, turned commercial pilot. He received many awards posthumously for his heroic actions alongside the other flight crew, like the Dr. Martin Luther King Congress of Racial Equality Award (CORE), the Westchester County Trailblazer Award, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference Drum Major for Justice Award.

His wife, Melodie Homer, started the LeRoy W. Homer Jr. Foundation to encourage young people from underrepresented communities with an interest in flying to pursue professional careers in the field of aviation. “I recognized that LeRoy was left out of the story and people didn’t understand what his role was that day,” she said in the documentary.