by the following september old #30 and #14 were integrated, all black firefighters formerly assigned at the segregated houses were transferred into 17 of the city's 91 fire stations. hazings still occurred, but along the lines of the traditional firehouse fare all probies endured. the long crisis year of 1955-56 finally ended for the lafd. bradley garret and tolbert young were the first blacks hired after integration. both are terminated unfairly during their academy training, which path jim crow practices now took in the fd. (in 2009 a black probie in the diversity class on randalls island, nyc collapsed and died during training at the fdny academy, leading the vulcan society to question whether blacks in that class were being unfairly targeted for drop-on-request.) by 1959 barely 3% of the firefighters in the lafd were african-american. during the 60 years following alderson's departure, questions of whether he was a traditionalist protecting his department arose. in looking back, the questions can be answered and several observations apply to the segregation years. the foremost question is whether was it his opposition to integration that caused the crisis year of chaos? yes, but until then, jim crow laws supported segregation, which alderson believed in, and he had convinced himself that his legal obligations under the city charter prohibited assignments based upon race, albeit that some of the city's laws now ran against the rulings adopted by the supreme court and made law everywhere across america.