This is why Google is celebrating England’s first black firefighter Frank Bailey

Frank Bailey, thought to be England’s first full-time black firefighter, is being celebrated on Google’s homepage on what would have been his 95th birthday.

The eye-catching Google Doodle, illustrated by West Yorkshire-based artist Nicola Miles, features a cartoon Bailey dressed in his uniform, with the Google logo drawn in the shape of a fire hose.

Google Doodles are special illustrations of notable historical figures, holidays, events or achievements that search engine users can learn about in one click.

So, why is Google celebrating firefighter Frank Bailey on 26 November?

Who was Frank Bailey?

Frank Bailey passed away in 2015, but his legacy lives on. He dedicated his life to the fight for equality.

A Guyanese-British firefighter and social worker, he was born on 26 November in 1925 in Guyana, South America.

He attended local schools before taking a job on a German trade ship, which brought him to New York where he found work in a hospital as a porter before becoming a medical assistant.

There, he staged a walkout in protest of the hospital’s segregated dining facilities, which resulted in the dining areas being integrated.

According to Google’s biography on Bailey, this was “just one of [his] many successful challenges to an unequal status quo”.

Frank Bailey (The Bailey family/Google)

How did he become a firefighter?

In his late 20s, in 1953, Bailey moved to London where he heard black people were not being hired for the city’s fire service.

He was determined to challenge this racism, applying to join the West Ham Fire Brigade where he made history by being accepted into the service and becoming London’s first black firefighter.

Bailey is also widely believed to be the first full-time black firefighter in England, according to the Black History Month website.

Speaking about his career in a 2007 collection of memoirs of black and Asian staff in the London Fire Brigade, Bailey said: “I was told that the authorities were not hiring black men because they were not strong enough physically or well enough educated to do the job.

“I immediately recognised racism and said I’m going to apply to be a firefighter and see if they find me unfit.

“I saved a fellow firefighter’s life when he fainted while we were on the fifth floor of a ladder drill session.

“I brought him down to the ground in a fireman’s lift. The guy’s weight was 16 stone and he was 6’2.”

Bailey then became a union branch representative at his station to advocate for workers’ rights, before he left the role in 1965 after being repeatedly denied a promotion.

Yet, he made history again by becoming the first black legal advisor at Marylebone Magistrates Court, specialising in working with black young people.