Interview transcripts -- Newsday.com

Transcript of full Lucius Ware interview

[Lucius Ware is 74 and was born in Ohio]

Transcript of full Julius O. Pearse interview

My name is Julius O. Pearse. The middle initial is for Otto, as I am known to a lot of my friends. I was born July the 6th 1933 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Transcript of full Joyce McCray interview

My name is Joyce McCray, I'm 80 years old. I was born in New York City, in Harlem.

Transcript of full Dorothy Goosby interview

My name is Councilwoman Dorothy L. Goosby. I was born in a small town in Florida called Apalachicola and I am 60-plus years old.

Transcript of full Roger Corbin interview

My name is Legislator Roger Corbin. I was born September, 25, 1946. That's right, I'm 61 years old and I feel good. I run 6 miles a dayI was born in Brooklyn, NY I've been in this job for 13 years now, going on my seventh term. The job is really exciting to me because I help people

Transcript of full David Diamond interview

My name is David Diamond, I'm 70 years old. I was born in New York City.

Transcript of full Maurice Mitchell interview

Maurice Mitchell, 28, is the lead organizer for the Long Island Progressive Coalition. He trains activists to work on better schools as well as affordable housing and health care. Born to immigrants from Grenada and Trinidad, he graduated from Long Beach High School in 1997 and Howard University in 2001. He lives in Oceanside.

Transcript of full Charles Hayes interview

My name is Charles B. Hayes. I'm going to be 85 years old Feb. 14. The B stands for Burnett. I lived in Morganza [La.] for a number of years. I moved about in Louisiana. One of the things that did happen to me, I wasn't drawn to it so much as -- it was something that I thought I could do -- education, being a teacher. My parents made sacrifices. Let me tell you, when I started going to school myself, there wasn't any opportunities at all for Negro children. One thing that had to happen was that they actually pay to have aunts and uncles to keep me in New Orleans ... That's the reason I got into it [education] ... it's the one place I could get a kind of education because of what was available. But getting in there and finding out how badly they were being taught and how little people were genuinely interested, I decided I was going to hang with it. It became a kind of profession, not that I was prepared to do it or that I had even thought of keeping with it, it was something that I thought had to be done.

Transcript of full Hugh Wilson interview

My name is Hugh A. Wilson. I was born in Kingston, Jamaica, West Indies. I am a retired professor of political science at Adelphi University. I'm 67 years of age.

Transcript of full Marge Rogatz interview

My name is Marge Rogatz. I am the president and CEO of Community Advocates [based in Roslyn Heights], which is an advocacy organization that has been involved, primarily in Nassau County, since 1972, in helping vulnerable populations obtain their entitlements from mostly public agencies, but also from private ones. And a great deal of the work we've done over the years has been in regard to people's rights, particularly people of color, and poor people. I have been president of Community Advocates since 1986. Before that, I worked as a consultant in community development and issues related to revitalization and helping families to cope with some of the things [that] people [who] are discriminated against have to cope with -- which means education, health and, particularly, housing. And before that, in my consulting, I did a user-needs study for Mayor [John]Lindsay. I did a study of the poverty-designated areas for Gene Nickerson, when he was county executive in Nassau. I worked for [ Suffolk] county executives Dennison and Klein and did work that really identified, again, how services are delivered, where are the gaps and what can be done about it. I came to this from having worked in the civil rights movement. I had gone to national CORE [Congress of Racial Equality] with Lincoln Lynch, who at the time he went to national CORE was director of Long Island CORE. And when Lincoln went to CORE as the associate national director, I went as a special assistant to Jim Farmer [CORE's co-founder and national director].

Transcript of full Darlene Harris interview

My name is Darlene D. Harris. I'm 42 years old. I was born in New York City, N.Y., and I currently reside in Uniondale. I've resided here well over 30 years. And I am currently an administrative law judge for the City of New York as well as an attorney in private practice and a Star hearing officer.

Transcript of full Delores Quintyne interview

My name is Delores Quintyne. I'm 74 years old. And I was born in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Transcript of full Eddie Bergman interview

Eddie Bergman, 27, graduated from Northport High and founded Miracle Corners of the World, a nonprofit group that does development projects in Africa.

Transcript of full Reginald Tuggle interview

REGINALD TUGGLE

Transcript of full William Wheeler interview

WILLIAM WHEELER

Transcript of full Ernestine Small interview

"My name is Ernestine Small. I was born in the village of Rockville Centre, and I am 71 years old. I am program director for the Rockville Centre/Lakeview Economic Opportunity Commission.

Transcript of full Robert Gray interview

My name is Robert Gray. I was born in Long Beach Memorial Hospital, July 13, 1951. I was raised by my mother and father to reach a hand out. Even now, if I see something wrong, I'm going to try to help. I don't know if that's what you call a community activist, that's what I may be. I became involved basically because I was taught by my parents that you do reach out. We just helped each other. We loved each other. We lived together. And I might add that wasn't all-black. I was born and raised in a community at a time when everybody needed everybody. We didn't have a difference to who you helped. As a 9-year-old, all I saw was people helping one another. I lived in a neighborhood that was really very concentrated, and people cared. It was just a different time. People cared. I find myself still caring a great deal about what happens to people.

Transcript of full Marianela Jordan interview

"My parents and I moved from the Dominican Republic after a terrible hurricane in 1979. I was five. Growing up in Freeport, I saw a strike at a factory where my mom worked -- they stamped logos on the outside of makeup jars. The workers didn't have the basic breaks and things that immigrant workers don't have. It made an impression on me when I saw all of them work together to get fairness.

Transcript of full Joseph McNeil interview

My name is Joseph McNeil. I am 65 years old and I was born in Wilmington, N.C., 1942.

Transcript of full Hazel Dukes interview

One of my dreams is to see that we can really put the culture into a curriculum form that we the presenters, such as myself and others, do not kill themselves in the shortest month of the year, in February, trying to rekindle and re-recite the history of African Americans. And I'm sure that there are other ethnic groups that feel the same way. So my dream is somewhere in civics, social studies, whatever our state board of regents come up with. And every year when the NAACP goes to Albany we continue to say this and my dream is one day that this is really a reality.

Transcript of full Rembert Brown interview

My name is Rembert H. Brown. The H stands for Hale. I was born in a little place called Smokes, South Carolina, on October 20, 1921.

Transcript of full Rener Reed interview

My name is Rener Reed, and I was born in Richton, Mississippi, and I am 68 years of age.

Transcript of full Tawaun Whitty interview

"I remember as a child watching leaders in the community help to push for affordable housing, improvement in the infrastructure and beautification projects -- then coming home from college and seeing a lot of that had come to a standstill because a lot of the old leaders had gotten tired. I wanted to continue that movement. I helped organize the annual Gordon Heights Day.