Frederick N. Rasmussen
Baltimore Sun
(MCT)
In late September, the Baltimore City Fire Department renamed Engine Company 52 on West Baltimore’s Woodbrook Avenue the Hilton L. Roberts Sr. Fire Station in honor of a pioneering Black firefighter who was a member of the second class that integrated the city’s firefighter academy and the fire department in 1954.
Roberts’ children and other descendants attended the event with Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott, city Fire Chief Niles R. Ford, City Council President Nick Mosby, City Council Vice President Sharon Green-Middleton and 7th District Councilman James Torrence.
Engine 52′s renaming to the Hilton L. Roberts Sr. Fire Station marks the fourth city firehouse to honor Black Baltimore firefighters.
Engine Company 13 and Truck Company 16 in the 400 block of McMechen St. was named the Arthur “Smokestack” Hardy Fire Station in 2004. Hardy had not been a member of the 1954 class, but in 1942, he and 14 other Black men formed an auxiliary fire department.
The department allowed the auxiliary firefighters to train and ride with regular city firefighters, and after the department integrated, Hardy chose to stay with the auxiliary.
In 2005, Charles R. Thomas Sr., who also graduated from Baltimore’s fire academy in 1954, attended the ceremony that renamed Engine Company 36 on Edmondson Avenue after him. A year later, Engine Company 29 on Park Heights Avenue was named for Littleton B. Wyatt Sr., a Morgan State College graduate who also was a member of the second fire academy class to graduate African Americans.
Roberts, who was born in Baltimore in 1925, was raised in the city’s Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood, and graduated from Frederick Douglass High School. His father, Martin Roberts, was a longshoreman, and his mother, Sara Brooks Roberts, an accomplished seamstress.
“He was 17 when he enlisted in the Navy in 1942,” said his son, Keith A. Roberts, a retired federal agent and Marine Corps veteran who worked for the Department of Homeland Security. “He served during World War II, and even though the military was segregated, he did very well and rose to become a petty officer. In those days, it was difficult to get that rank, but he was a pioneer in so many ways.”
Roberts was discharged at the war’s end in