The Importance of Memory and Storytelling: Looking Back at Integration in the North
Leonard M. Alexander, in conjunction with his son, my good friend and former Dickinson School of Law faculty colleague, Peter Alexander, is the author of It Takes A Village: The Integration of the Hillburn School System. The brief, inspiring book provides another timely look at the challenges of desegregation and demonstrates the important roles played by persistent local leaders in moving towards integration. Leonard Alexander also reminds us that opposition to change was not solely a “southern” problem:
“Hillburn, New York, has always been a simple, quiet community. Part of its charm was the appearance that people of different races lived in harmony. The harmony, unfortunately, was attributable only to the social norms of the time. The white men in the village controlled everything — jobs, banks, land — and the colored people, as we were known and referred to, would be taken care of as along as we stayed in our place.
‘Our place’ meant we should not be too vocal or too uppity. Also, ‘our place’ meant that we would live on the colored side of town (with the dividing line being Route 17). ‘Our place’ also meant that we would attend a separate school from the main grammar school in the village. Since 1889, four years before the village of Hillburn was chartered, the colored children attended grammar school that was set aside for us. The school was situated alongside a babbling brook and it was known as Brook School. Unofficially, it was the colored school.”
The book describes the efforts of Leonard Alexander’s father, working with others in “the village,” to obtain a key NAACP investigation and report in 1931 about the so-called “separate but equal” treatment of the town’s two grammar schools. The evidence included the fact that new classroom texts were purchased only for the white school; the white school’s old books might then be sent to Brook School.
Leonard’s book is also a testament to the importance of memory and storytelling. This is the story of multiple generations of the Alexander family’s involvement with community action, education and civil rights.
In reading the book in one sitting, I was intrigued by the role that jobs played in the ability — or understandable reluctance — of community members to challenge inequality. Leonard’s father worked for the New York City General Post Office, and that gave him the financial independence from the local factory owners to challenge their “Jim Crow” system. A small, poignant detail suggests the consequences of activism, as a white business owner and politico would attempt to curry favor (and, probably, votes) by passing out candy to local black children, unless he learned their last name was Alexander.
Congratulations to Leonard Alexander, and to proud son and co-author, Peter. And, by the way, how many of us have parents with “unheard” stories to share?