"That hit me so hard. I wasn't used to being segregated. My family had moved here from Seattle, where we didn't have colored neighbors. My family was integrated — the only grandfather I ever saw was an Irishman from Belfast," said Hartsfield, now 92.
At Station 30 at the corner of Central Avenue and 14th Street, he sized up his co-workers.
"I was going to UCLA and I looked down on these men. I was thinking they've never even heard of the general quadratic equation. I was thinking I'll be their officer in a few years."
It didn't take Hartsfield long to discover he was wrong about a few things. First of all, he wasn't likely to be promoted any time soon.
The segregated Fire Department had only two black stations. The only way an African American firefighter could advance in rank was to be promoted to another black man's spot. Since there were no leadership positions for blacks beyond the job of captain, nobody was rising in rank.
He learned his lesson about his station-mates at his first smoky fire. He and another firefighter entered the blazing structure and Hartsfield's eyes began burning. Soon, he was choking and gasping for breath.
The other fireman's nickname was Snake because of the way he crawled across the floor of burning homes with a fire hose.
"He said, 'Get down here, rookie. This is where the goodness is,' " Hartsfield recalled. "I got down and he looked into my blurry eyes and said, 'They didn't teach you this at UCLA, did they?' "
"Rookie" became Hartsfield's nickname. He would carry it for the rest of his career.
Hartsfield was on duty at Station 30 when Pearl Harbor was bombed on Dec. 7, 1941. He was quickly called up for military service. Because he had been in the ROTC at Manual Arts High School, he was commissioned as an Army infantry lieutenant.
The Army was segregated too. To his frustration and dismay, he was attached to a black supply unit and sent to unload ships in the Pacific.
After the war, Hartsfield returned to his segregated station house. He was still working there in 1953 when court rulings and the national mood were shifting to the belief that segregation was discriminatory.
The next year the city began transferring blacks into all-white fire stations. African American firefighters quickly encountered harassment and physical threats in their new assignments, and Hartsfield and about 30 others formed a group called the Stentorians to support integration.
Feces were smeared on one black fireman's bunk pillow. A "whites only" sign popped up on a firehouse kitchen door. African American firefighters were shunned by white colleagues in some places.
Things got so bad the Stentorians mounted a round-the-clock patrol of downtown's Station 10, where relations were particularly hostile.
Looking back, Hartsfield now figures he had it relatively easy. "Most of the black firefighters couldn't put their food in the station house refrigerator. It would get contaminated if they did."
But at his integrated station, Hartsfield's food was left alone, although white firemen would not eat with him.
"I had a decent captain. He took me aside and said this isn't coming down from the department, but don't go in the kitchen when they're in there. For five years I ate after they were through," he recalled.
"I never heard the N-word — the men called me 'Calhoun,' from 'Amos 'n' Andy.' "
One black firefighter took to carrying a pistol. "I noticed a bulge in his pocket and asked what it was. He said, 'It's my .45.' I was riding in a car with him and I knew if we got stopped my career in law would be over. Fortunately, we weren't."
By then, Hartsfield had enrolled in law school at USC, relying on the GI Bill to cover his tuition and book costs. He was mapping out a career change but still needed to keep working as a firefighter to put food on the table for his wife and three children.
Hartsfield, whose undergraduate degree was in pre-engineering, remembers struggling and taking a summer session law course. He was dismayed to learn that the class would be taught by a visiting scholar from Louisiana. The southern professor would probably kick him out of class, he remembers worrying at the time.
Instead, with the visiting professor's help, "I went from almost failing to Law Review. I was the lowest man there, but I was on Law Review," Hartsfield said.
He earned his USC law degree in 1955. In early 1961 he quit the Fire Department to practice law fulltime.
His work as an attorney lead to a new job: professor of black studies at Cal State Long Beach. Hartsfield said he tried not to dwell on his years in the department. He sometimes talked to his students about the discrimination he and other black firefighters experienced in L.A. But he was quick to explain that back then, "it wasn't just the Fire Department — it was bad everywhere."
"I encouraged my students not to look down on the Fire Department, that it's a darn good job," he said.
He taught for some 26 years, leaving the university at age 70.
During retirement, Hartsfield felt the pull of his days at the Los Angeles Fire Department. Over time, he became more involved with the Stentorians, the black firefighters group that today has about 400 members from the city and county fire departments, according to Brent Burton, a Los Angeles County fire captain who is president of the group.
Hartsfield said he's come to believe it was important to memorialize his experiences in the department, as painful as some of them were. In 1997, he helped open the African American Firefighters Museum in the long-abandoned Station 30 building. He still volunteers three days a week there, where his original Bakelite helmet and a turnout coat emblazoned "Rookie" are among the displays.
"Back then, when I was working, I was bitterly complaining all the time. As long as I was busy complaining, all I saw was the dark side: I can't promote," he said. "During the ugly integration fight, I was known to the chief and the white firemen as the 'damn [black] agitator.' "
The Rookie said he now appreciates what went right in his life. "In three years in the infantry, I never was even shot at, thanks to prejudice and segregation," he said.
He better understands the segregation mind-set now too, pointing to an incident in his young marriage when he became angry and frustrated while he and his wife were bowling.
"I looked up and my wife's score was ahead of mine. At that stage of my life, no woman was ever supposed to be ahead of me in an athletic contest," he said. "I wanted to catch up and put her in her place. It wasn't that I hated her: We were married 50 years and 22 days and had five children."
After wife Katherine died 20 years ago he remarried. "My present wife Jeanne is a retired R.N. What better than that could an old man want?" he asked with a laugh.
He even takes a charitable view of the infamous 2004 incident in which a black firefighter was fed spaghetti secretly laced with dog food at a fire house. "Hazing has always been part of a fireman's life," Hartsfield said.
Things have gotten better, he said. "We've had two black chiefs, 20 black chief officers, a black chairman of the joint chiefs, a black man and black woman as secretary of State and now we have a black president."
Two years ago, he was honored by the city for his work.
"I was the rookie all my career, and I ended up with the Fire Department's first Lifetime Achievement Award," he said.
It was handed to him by the department's first African American chief, Douglas Barry, said the Rookie.
"One man's lifetime has extended from exclusion to inclusion," Hartsfield said.
"A puppy's eyes open in seven days. It took me 50 years to finally figure out I've been blessed."
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