Firefighter Who Stood Up to Bigotry at Station Honored

The men wanted him to leave.

They wanted him to go right back where he came from, so 1955 could be 1955 again and nothing would ever have to change.

The men gave cruelty their best shot. They put on their worst faces, let the foulest things fall from their mouths, and polished their incivility until it shone as brightly as their badges. When the lone black man still insisted on staying and working at Fire Station 46 on Vernon Avenue, the men put their sentiments in print.

They hung a sign on the door: “White Adults.”

Still, Reynaldo Lopez stayed. Secretly he photographed the sign. In 1955 the picture aired on television and in newspapers, offering a visual representation of life inside city fire stations for African American firefighters. It spoke a thousand words and more about deep resistance to integration in the Los Angeles Fire Department.

“That photo was the catalyst, as far as the public’s concern,” Lopez said. “I don’t think they knew what was going on in the fire stations.”

On Saturday, at old Firehouse 46, the station where he once endured indignities, Lopez was at last honored for his actions.

In the company of his wife, children and grandchildren, he listened as members of the Stentorians, an association of African American firefighters, spoke of his courage and perseverance during a time “when pathways to success were absolutely closed for African Americans.

“Those of use who are successful will forever owe a debt of gratitude to the Old Stentorians,” Deputy Chief Jimmy Hill of the Los Angeles Fire Department told the audience. “I stand before you as an installment on that debt.” Hill is the highest ranking African American in the department.

Over the years the photo has endured. It is the cover illustration of “The Old Stentorians,” a seminal work on the history of African American firefighters in Los Angeles. But only a small group of people knew that Lopez, the target of the message, also was the clandestine photographer.

“When I wrote the book he was still on the job,” said Arnett Hartsfield, a retired firefighter, attorney and historian who co-wrote the book with Billy Mills. “I wouldn’t dare say, ‘Reynaldo Lopez took the photo.’ ”

Even in 1973 when the book was published, public acknowledgment of his role might have caused Lopez difficulties at work.

But for years Hartsfield, who was a leader of the Old Stentorians, felt public acknowledgment was in order for Lopez and many of the other men who integrated the department. Los Angeles County Fire Capt. Brent Burton wanted to give Lopez the experience of hearing what has never been said publicly.

“We’re saying thank you to him,” said Burton, who is executive vice president of the Los Angeles County Stentorians. “That station where he was taking all that nonsense is now [the Stentorians] center. I’m sure he had no idea that would happen.”

There was no way of seeing that possibility in 1955.

That year the city’s stations were hell houses for many African American firefighters who integrated formerly all-white stations. The city’s Fire Commission had ordered the department to integrate, but the chief of the department, John Alderson, opposed integration and made his feelings clear.

For the black firefighters and their supporters--including the NAACP--integration was as much a pragmatic issue as a moral one. Under segregation, there were only two stations in the city where African Americans could work. That meant opportunities for employment and advancement in the department were severely limited. Promotions occurred only when there was a death or retirement at one of the two stations.

Opponents of integration predicted failure. They argued that the experiment of mixing races in tight living quarters would not work, and that African American firefighters would ask to return to their all-black stations.

The black firefighters who went to work in white stations knew that prediction was more plan than prophesy. But the group of pioneers was organized and vowed to stick it out. No matter what happened, they told each other, they had to remember their goal: Stay in the firehouse.

His first day at Station 46, at 1409 W. Vernon Ave., could not have gone better, Lopez recalled. The acting captain was G. Keith Kenworthy. Kenworthy and the other men on the shift that day welcomed Lopez. They got along amicably, he said. They talked, ate ice cream together and that was it.

“That’s the kind of person he was,” Lopez said of Kenworthy. “He believed in fair play.”

The shift ended and the men went home. By the time Lopez reported back to work, the men who welcomed him had been transferred to other stations. Kenworthy too, was gone. In the politics of the time, kindness to black firemen was viewed by the top brass as tantamount to an act of insubordination.

“There was an entirely different crew,” he said. “I call them ‘the goon squad.’ They were there to prove that we couldn’t work together. It was subterfuge.”

During the day the white firefighters ignored him--except to insult and berate him, his family and his heritage, Lopez said. He was not allowed to enter the kitchen while they were eating. Like African American firefighters at other stations, he was ordered to bring his own pots and food. Some black firefighters simply brought cooked meals and left them in their cars.

“They couldn’t put it in the refrigerator,” Hartsfield said. “White firefighters opposed to integration would urinate in it.”

Lopez’s wife solved the problem for him; she brought him meals and made the situation more tolerable, he said.

During company lineups the captain assigned him a spot--four feet from the rest of the company. His bed was placed behind the door leading to the dormitory; while he slept the men made a practice of banging it shut and open.

Even when the discussion had to do with fire department matters and procedures--during house drills, for example--he was treated as an outcast.

“I have never been called upon to answer a question or discuss a point,” he said in a 1955 letter to the chief. “To this date my sole participation in this type of drill has been as a silent witness.”

On June 24 the sign appeared on the door that led to the kitchen, which was housed in a separate building. Lopez saw it and called fellow firefighter Hartsfield, who was a key organizer in the effort to integrate the stations.

Hartsfield drove to the station and from a spot in the backyard of an adjacent market, he tossed a camera over the wall to Lopez.

As the other firefighters ate lunch together in the kitchen, Lopez snapped the photo. All sorts of things went through his mind in those moments. At any time, the men could have stepped outside the door.

“I felt pressure for two reasons,” he said. “One, I didn’t want to get involved with any physical incident with them, and also I wanted to stay there because that was the fight: They were supposed to prove that I would ask to leave, because we didn’t get along. We didn’t get along, but I didn’t ask to leave.”

Hartsfield drove to a friend’s house, developed the photo, then headed to Hollywood and the office of respected television news reporter Bill Stout.

Stout had covered the Fire Department integration issue and knew the situation the black men faced. That day, Lopez talked to his captain about the sign. The captain refused to take it down.

“You know you’re not wanted here,” Lopez recalled him saying.

In the evening, as the men were sitting together in the station watching the news, Stout’s story ran, complete with the photo. Other news outlets picked up on the story.

“This got a lot of negative reaction from the public,” Lopez recalled.

It was another chapter in a long-running battle over integration. An article in the June 30, 1955, edition of The Mirror Daily News includes a photo of Lopez and Kenworthy under the headline: “Racial Ruckus in Fire Dept., Jim Crow Barrier Hits Negro Member.” The article describes charges of a “campaign of vilification and abuse” against Lopez.

The department, now under fire, fired back: It was Lopez, officials alleged, who hung the sign and then photographed it. And there was a witness who had seen him do it.

“I was brought up before . . . the Board of Chiefs for this with the possibility of being disciplined and even being fired,” Lopez said. “They had gotten a civilian, a dry cleaner, to come as a witness and say he saw me put the sign in the door. The rest of the crew was there as witnesses.”

The story might have had a different ending--if not for the observations of Stout.

“He appeared at this hearing, having a copy of the picture,” Lopez recalled. “He questioned the civilian as to what time of day the photo was taken. The guy said, it was 4 or 5 o’clock.”

But nature itself had time-stamped the original black-and-white photo, and Stout knew it. There was a shadowing on the photo, Stout pointed out. That shadowing indicated the position of the sun at the moment the photo was taken. Thus the photo could not have been taken late in the afternoon. It was taken, he said, at noon.

“This made a liar of the witness,” Lopez said. “I believe Bill Stout saved my job.”

The charges were eventually dropped--but not the campaign to run Lopez out the station.

“They got a little uglier,” he said.

In a five-page letter to Chief Alderson, Lopez and Hartsfield outlined his treatment, which was similar to what other African American firefighters were experiencing. White supporters of integration were also singled out.

White supporters “were considered traitors and disloyal to the chief,” Lopez said. “Actually, they were being loyal to their own code of behavior as far as accepting other people.”

Kenworthy publicly accused the department of trying to torpedo the integration effort. He told the Mirror that he was, as a result, given “the Deep South treatment,” and was subjected to obscene names, beratings and insults.

“Many of the men would like to have treated me decently,” Kenworthy said in the article, “but they were scared for their jobs. They were afraid if they sided with me they’d be in the same fix.”

Kenworthy eventually lost his job for insubordination.

The event Saturday was like a gathering of war veterans; the Old Stentorians, draped in kente cloth, remembered those days, telling stories that their children never knew about until they were much older.

“It’s one of the stories that needs to be told,” Reginald Ballard, an Old Stentorian, said of Lopez.

“It’s really hard for a lot of us to talk about the old times.” Many, like Robert Ferguson, 79, marvel at the successes of those in the department today and encourage the young.

“I know you’re going to make it,” Ferguson said to a young man who is currently in the drill tower, hoping to make it on the department. “Don’t let me down.”

In 1955 the goal of African Americans was to stay. Lopez remained in the department for 28 years, and believes that the efforts of the Old Stentorians and their supporters opened up opportunities for African Americans, Latinos and Asians.

“That’s all very gratifying,” Lopez said. “I don’t regret it. It was time for this to happen and we just happened to be the ones . . . to cause it to happen.”