Reinhardt: A lesson in fighting prejudice

Fifty years ago, nine black teenagers braved verbal taunts and physical abuse as the first of their race to attend classes at Little Rock Central High School, and Kendall Reinhardt was there.

He wasn't one of the group that became known as the Little Rock Nine; he was a white student starting his senior year -- a year that young people look forward to all through their school years. Seniors, then as now, were at the top of the heap, garnering respect and admiration from underclassmen and generally ruling the social order of the school. It was a year of excitement, as the seniors began counting down the months, weeks and day until graduation, when they would embark on their lives as adults, either taking jobs or going to college.

Reinhardt could have taken the easy path by ignoring the new students and just enjoying his last year in high school. After all, there were 2,000 students in the block-long, four-story school, so he had plenty of other people with whom to associate.

It would have been easy to look past these black students, but Reinhardt didn't do that. And because he didn't -- because he treated the newcomers with respect -- he paid a price. Verbal torment and name calling from classmates were the consequences of his determination to behave as a decent human being to his black peers, but Reinhardt held to the values his parents had taught him. It eventually earned him a punch in the face from another white student.

"I was raised in an active Christian home, and the value of people was a 'given,'" Reinhardt said in an interview last Wednesday after the visiting retired banker spoke to a history class at Fort Scott Community College.

In his household, he said, people were respected as human beings, not for the color of their skin. His parents and the family's black maid, who helped raise him, all showed him that by example.

In the Little Rock, Ark. of the 1950s, though, segregation and racial discrimination were an accepted norm. He said he saw no racial incidents until that last year of high school, because both white people and people of color followed the old discriminatory social standards that were in place.

Then, integration came in the fall of 1957 and with it came an upheaval of the status quo.

"When -- at school -- I saw this stuff (taunting and violence), I was shocked," he said.

President Dwight Eisenhower said school desegregation must proceed, and Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus responded with a resounding "No."

"Gov. Faubus sent the National Guard to keep the nine back students out," Reinhardt said. "They turned Elizabeth (Eckford) away at every entrance with all this mob following her and yelling at her. And when the other eight black students showed up, they were turned away also."

After a couple of days, Faubus pulled the National Guard out and sent in the Little Rock police, Reinhardt said. Then Faubus decided to pull the police out and let events happen as they would.

"The next morning, everybody came to school, and it was surrounded by the 101st Airborne (from Fort Campbell, Ky.)," Reinhardt said. "I mean, they established order in no time flat.'

The soldiers, he said, weren't much older than the students, and what nobody knew at the time was that although they had bayonets on their rifles, there were no bullets in them.

After order was established, the soldiers remained for several weeks and were then pulled out, even though black students were still being abused.

"Sometime in October, the 101st Airborne was pulled out and the National Guard was federalized by Eisenhower," Reinhardt said. "They were sent there with instructions to keep the peace and protect the students. A guard was assigned to each of the Little Rock Nine to follow 10 to 15 feet behind, carrying their rifles, all during the day. They didn't do anything to stop the abuse. The kids were body slammed into lockers and tripped. Elizabeth was shoved down a flight of stairs."

Not everyone was abusive, though.

"Initially, according to all nine, there was a good number of kids who introduced themselves and made friendly overtures, but that quickly faded after a week or two," Reinhardt said. "I think a lot of it was peer pressure, but I think a lot of it was political pressure."

He said years later his wife helped him realize that there were probably a lot of white students who wanted to reach out to their new black classmates as he did, but that their parents didn't support them as his parents did.

Reinhardt developed a friendship with Elizabeth Eckford when they had a speech class together, and another white student, Ann Williams, became Eckford's friend there, as well.

"Elizabeth sat next to me, and Ann walked over and sat down and introduced herself," he said. "Years later, when she was asked if any white students were nice to her, Elizabeth said there were two -- Kendall Reinhardt and Ann Williams."

After high school Reinhardt grew up and entered a career in banking. In 1996, he was senior vice president of National City Bank in Louisville, Ky.

That year, Uniontown High School student Heather Jurgenson contacted Elizabeth Eckford in Little Rock to obtain information for her National History Day project. Jurgenson's history teacher at the time, Norm Conard, took her and classmates Jeremy Johnson and David Foster to visit Eckford.

When Jurgenson asked Eckford if any white students had been nice to her, she named Reinhardt and Williams, he said.

"My dad still lives in Little Rock, and they looked him up and called him," Reinhardt said. "He gave them my number and they called and started interviewing me."

When Jurgenson's project and Foster and Johnson's project qualified for the national competition in College Park, Md., they invited their subjects to attend, as well. Reinhardt and his wife went to see Eckford in Little Rock, and then they attended the National History Day finals together, where they were introduced to others in attendance.

"It was the beginning of a healing for Elizabeth," Reinhardt said. "She had been shut down emotionally -- those are her words -- for 20 years. Until then, she had given very few interviews and usually only to students. Once, she had her son tell a reporter who came to her door that she had died, because she didn't want to talk to him."

Afterward, when Reinhardt returned to Louisville, a local church asked him to speak. A reporter was there and wrote a story, which brought more public awareness. In 1997, he spoke at the 40-year commemoration in Little Rock. Other speakers included Little Rock Nine member Ernest Green, President Bill Clinton and then-Gov. Mike Huckabee. Conard, Jurgenson, and other Uniontown students were there to see it.

Reinhardt kept in touch with Eckford. She, too, was receiving invitations to speak about their high school experience. Then, in 2002, they spoke together at a teachers' inservice meeting, and now they speak together often.

"When she gets an invitation to speak, Elizabeth often says, 'I think you should invite Kendall Reinhardt, too.' Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't," he said. "When we speak together, I work from Power Point presentation, but she speaks extemporaneously. She can pull all these facts and figures up -- it's amazing. I have to have a 27-page outline."

Asked if he believes society has progressed as far as it should to achieve racial harmony, Reinhardt said society has definitely come a long way, but that prejudice will exist until Jesus Christ returns.

Two areas that he believes society has fallen down in its development of equality are in the churches and in the home.

"Everybody has prejudices. I have prejudices of my own," he said. "What we have to do is learn to deal with it, not let it affect our personal relationships, business decisions, community standards, or political development. We have to deal with it the same as we have to deal with the other weaknesses in our lives. Where my prejudices conflict with my values, I have to make a point to let my values prevail."