The San Diego Union-Tribune
SAN DIEGO — When Ben Holman became a San Diego firefighter in 1951, he wasn’t looking to make history. He was just looking for a good, steady job with an opportunity to advance.
But the fire chief at the time saw Holman as the perfect hire to help racially integrate the fire department, which until that time assigned all its Black firefighters to a single station in Mountain View, a predominantly Black neighborhood. Every other station was manned exclusively by White firefighters…