NAACP's influence felt on Long Island

In a Long Island community where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once visited to promote school integration, the number of black teachers in the Malverne school district is little changed from a generation ago, despite ongoing efforts to further integrate the predominantly white faculty.

That and other lingering racial inequities - housing segregation, economically depressed neighborhoods and frequently strained relations with the police - are sobering to area members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, who are preparing to celebrate the 100th birthday of the nation's oldest civil rights organization.

"The fact that America has a black president does not mean America's racial issues are all solved," said Bea Bayley, president of the NAACP's Lakeview branch.

NAACP delegates from around the country - excited by the scheduled appearance next Thursday of President Barack Obama - are expected to flock to the New York Hilton in Manhattan beginning Monday for the organization's four-day centennial convention.

They will represent an organization that has helped bring about dramatic change in American society - including the near elimination of lynching, the end of legal segregation in public schools and the U.S. military, and voting rights laws that made possible Obama's election.

But the NAACP is also trying to fend off the perception that it is an aging organization fighting for equalities that have already been won.

Leroy Gadsden, president of the Jamaica, Queens, branch of the NAACP, said the fatal police shooting of an unarmed man, Sean Bell, 23, in 2006 demonstrated the ongoing need for organized advocacy in the black community.

After Bell's death, Gadsden worked with police to calm community tensions, but criticized prosecutors for failing to convict any of the officers.

"We still don't have equal protection under the law, and I think the Sean Bell trial demonstrated that," Gadsden said.

Visit by King in 1965

King visited the Malverne school district in 1965, two years after the state ordered the district to comply with the Supreme Court's decade-old ruling on school segregation.

Since then, the local NAACP has lobbied almost continually for greater black representation among teachers and administrators. In the Malverne district, three of every five students are black.

The district has 11 black teachers divided among its four school buildings, according to the NAACP, compared to nine black teachers in 1975. Last year, the Malverne school board hired a black principal and assistant principal at the high school.

Newsday was unable to reach school superintendent James Hunderfund.

Sherwyn Besson, a Malverne High School teacher who lives in the community, says the regular presence of NAACP representatives at school board meetings helps ensure that the black community's concerns about test scores, disciplinary measures, teacher hiring and other matters are heard.

"Their presence alone sends a message to the board that they won't go unchallenged," Besson said.

NAACP branches on Long Island have helped identify black applicants for positions in school systems, county governments and local police departments.

Work with police department

Last year, the Islip Town NAACP worked with the Suffolk County Police Department to successfully boost the number of African-Americans taking the police exam.

Islip NAACP president Rev. Roderick Pearson, 47, said he urged the collaboration because about 2.3 percent of the department's officers are black, and only two blacks hold the position of detective sergeant.

He said the presence of black officers in the department is important to building trust with black communities.

"Especially for people who need assistance and don't know where to turn, there is a real relevance for the NAACP," Pearson said.

Suffolk Executive Steve Levy said a joint effort between the NAACP and the Suffolk police department led to a doubling of the number of minority applicants who scored in the highest category on the most recent police recruitment examination. Levy also said the number of civilian complaints against Suffolk police fell by 50 percent since the NAACP helped design a sensitivity training program implemented in 2005.

"We work pretty closely with the NAACP, and have seen the results," Levy said.