John Cheatham
American firefighter
John W. Cheatham (1855–1918) was an American firefighter in Minneapolis. Born as an enslaved person in St. Louis, Missouri, Cheatham was freed at the age of eight by the Emancipation Proclamation, and then moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, with his family shortly thereafter. In 1883, at the age of 33, Cheatham was appointed as one of the first Black firefighters in Minneapolis. He held several leadership positions during his fire department career. In 2022, the City of Minneapolis re-designated a street in the Longfellow community as Cheatham Avenue to honor his legacy of racial integration within the city’s fire department.
Early life
John W. Cheatham was born in 1855 to an enslaved family in the U.S. state of Missouri. His family was freed by the Emancipation Proclamation of 1862. Shortly thereafter, at the age of eight, his family moved from St. Louis, Missouri, to Minneapolis, Minnesota.
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This entry incorporates text from “John Cheatham” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.