"Engine Four"

A new documentary
The story of North Carolina's first integrated firehouse

The 68-minute documentary tells the story of the integration in 1951 of Fire Station No. 4 on Dunleith Avenue in Winston-Salem. It was the first fire station in North Carolina to be integrated after the Jim Crow era.

The controversial decision to integrate the station - well before other landmark events in the struggle for civil rights - passed only when Mayor Marshall Kurfees cast a tie-breaking vote. Seven white firemen volunteered to serve with the eight black firemen the city hired to staff the station. Although the city spent almost $4,000 to create separate quarters at the station for whites and blacks, the men soon broke through the wall of segregation and began working, eating and living together.

"Engine Four" features extensive interviews with the four surviving firemen who served on Dunleith Avenue when the station was integrated, as well historic photographs, an original score by Alan Garfield, and an original song by Vincent Simpkins. Simpkins, an actor and singer who lives in Charlotte, also narrated the documentary.