Free Preview of Documentary on North Carolina’s First Integrated Fire Station

Marketing & Communications - July 2, 2007
Contact: Ed McNeal, 727-2317

A free preview screening of "Engine Four," a new documentary produced by WSTV 13, will be held at 7 p.m. Thursday, July 12, at the Stevens Center.

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.

The free preview is being sponsored by Southern Community Bank and Trust. No tickets are required and attendance is first-come, first served.

The documentary will be showed daily in August on WSTV 13, the city television channel on Time Warner Cable. See the broadcast schedule.

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