LI eighth-graders take a step toward unity

Hanley Gomez, an eighth-grader at Alverta B. Gray Schultz school in Hempstead, would like to change the world.

And he'd like to start by bringing people in Hempstead and Garden City together.

By the numbers, Hempstead is mostly black and Hispanic, and Garden City is mostly white. Hempstead is mostly poor and middle class, Garden City is mostly wealthy.

But Gomez, who is 14, doesn't deal in numbers -- demographic, economic or otherwise. He prides himself on taking a larger view.

"It is important for us kids and for adults to get together," said Gomez, who, with 300 other eighth-grade students, spent much of the year learning about the civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s.

"If we can unite in schools, we can unite in communities," he said, "and if we can unite in communities, we can unite as one nation, and if we can do that, we can unite as one world."

Which is why Gomez marched with 40 of his classmates, on a hot day last week, one mile from his school to the border of the two villages and then a second mile to picnic in the cool shade of a Garden City park.

The march was to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first Freedom Riders, groups of black and white activists who, beginning in May 1961, boarded buses bound for Southern states, to end racial segregation in interstate travel.

Some of their lessons were hard, such as a film about the death of Emmett Till, also 14, who was kidnapped, beaten, shot and dumped into a river for whistling at a white girl while visiting Mississippi.

"Many of the children were very surprised at all that happened during that period of time," said Claire LaMothe, who, with fellow social studies teachers Dawn Sumner and William Nash, were among the march chaperones.

"There was some anger," she said, "there were some tears."

Forty of the children opted to take on extra work when the teachers, working with Alan Singer, a Hofstra University professor in the teaching, literacy and leadership department, decided to put lessons into action with a walking tour of Hempstead and Garden City.

Back in 1963, the students learned, there was a proposal to consolidate both school districts into one. It never passed.

The students also learned about segregation on Long Island and of inequities between mostly minority and mostly white school districts.

"I didn't know about segregation and all of that before," said Celita Sandoval, 14. "I think we've got to make it so that everybody can get along."

"We learned about how people made sacrifices," said Alliyah Sylvester, 14. "It's different now, but things can be better."

It took about an hour for the group to walk two miles. They did not carry signs. Instead, most wore T-shirts they designed. Some bore the words "Children's Crusade" and "End Long Island Apartheid."

Along the way, Singer pointed out landmarks to the group, including fences that separated one community from the other and a Residents Only sign on a Garden City park. But the students noticed other things, such as how cool the village was because of its many trees, how smooth the local roads were and how quiet the streets were.

Singer had received permission for the group to have lunch; and a Garden City parks employee met the students and directed them to picnic tables under the welcome shade of a stand of trees.

Some students said they'd been to Garden City before; one said he had a friend there. A few others wondered, aloud, whether they would meet other students in the park.

They didn't, but Singer said he planned for another group of eighth-graders to march again next year. And, perhaps, to meet eighth-grade Garden City students for a picnic together.

"I am so glad I marched," said Jordan Boyd, 13. "It feels like I'm making an important statement, which is that we need to change."

The students spent an hour in the park. They ate. And talked.

But mostly, like children anywhere, they got together and played.