Barber "Bobby" Knightner Sr. wasn't the best known teacher or principal in Rock Hill schools during the integration of black and white students almost 40 years ago. But those who served alongside Knightner during those difficult days before and after integration recall that Knightner's patience played a crucial peacemaking role for students of all races.
Knightner, a Rock Hill native, died earlier this week at age 74.
After years as a teacher at segregated Edgewood Elementary School, then principal at segregated Hillcrest Elementary School in Lesslie, Knightner was picked by the school district to help ease tensions at Rock Hill's black high school, Emmett Scott High, before forced integration, said Knightner's wife of 52 years, Ernestine "Tina" Knightner. In those days, strong administrators were vital to handling schools filled with understandable anxiety over changes that were coming, Tina Knightner said.
"His reputation for being calm, able to handle situations, was already known," Tina Knightner said.
At Emmett Scott, Sam Foster was principal, and Knightner was assistant principal in the last school years of 1969 and 1970. Foster recalled Knightner's "calming demeanor" working with students who were emotional over the changes coming the next year. Knightner was already known in schools, in his church and in his neighborhood, for being a man who could be the needed tough guy or the needed kind guy, depending on the situation. A father figure with a pat on the back or a stern lecture.
"Those were difficult years, and Barber was instrumental in working with youngsters to help students get through productively," Foster said.
After Emmett Scott closed, Rock Hill High was integrated, and brand-new integrated Northwestern High School opened. Knightner was assigned to Rock Hill High as assistant principal, and he dealt with everything from bus routes to discipline. The Rev. Walter White, former pastor at Flint Hill Baptist Church, where Knightner was a longtime deacon and Sunday school teacher, said Knightner's patient demeanor was vital in keeping tensions down at Rock Hill High during those difficult first days, weeks and months.
"He was a helper during integration, trying times though they were," White said. "People sometimes forget that many black students didn't want to leave their school and go to a different school; Barber was very important in helping those students fit in."
Knightner himself dealt with the remnants of segregated schools but would not get ruffled, said his wife, a school librarian who went from all-black Castle Heights Junior High before integration to integrated Northwestern High after integration. Some students and staff bridled at the idea of a black top administrator, Tina Knightner said.
"But he was a patient man who always considered what was best for students -- all students -- before he worried about what was best for himself," she said.
Through the next 20 years, until retiring in 1990, Knightner stayed at Rock Hill High, where he handled discipline for the increasingly large high school. Knightner's calmness, again, was something considered invaluable by his peers.
The funeral for Knightner is at 1 p.m. today at Flint Hill Baptist Church, where White the pastor will talk again about Knightner's patience.
"Barber Knightner was a role model for me," said Niles Chumley, a peer assistant principal at Rock Hill High, who later became the school's principal in the 1990s. "I never saw him raise his voice. I never saw him lose his cool. On the discipline hall, I never saw him upset."
What Chumley means is that Barber Knightner Sr. showed his peers and so many students how to be patient and learn together.
