MY TAKE

From the Editor and Publisher

It was my seventh birthday, February 18, 1967. My parents threw me an elaborate party at our home on Long Island (photo facing page). They owned a beautiful, then-modern split-level house in a suburban community called Lakeview. The times were frankly not good racially. Lakeview had been a largely white community when my parents became homeowners in 1958. When they and other black families moved in, white families moved away; it was called “white flight.” Before some of them left, they even posted rather disgusting signs on their lawns to discourage us from being around them, like in the photo below.

Courtesy Malverne Historical & Preservation Society

The local school district, Malverne District 12, had a particular problem with racism and discrimination. Three communities shared the district: Lakeview, which was in the midst of becoming nearly all-black; Malverne, a largely Irish and Jewish village; and Lynbrook, which was mostly Italian and blue-collar. My eldest sister Gloria, who was one of a handful of black students to graduate from Malverne High School (photo facing page, bottom) in 1962, was one of the first to integrate the high school. We wouldn’t be truly accepted until 1966, when the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the district to be desegregated. As a result, I spent the next four years being bussed to Davison Avenue School in Lynbrook.

None of the white kids in my first-grade class at Davison attended my birthday party—except for Kelly O’Toole, who had a crush on me at the time. The parents wouldn’t allow it; race relations were that bad. Thankfully, as I grew older, tensions eased, and I had many white friends by the time I reached Malverne High in 1974.

People complain that we have sunk back into our dark past and that things are getting worse. I think back to that time in my childhood and see how far we have come, because many people of both races cared. That’s what continues to give me hope.

Thank you. The editor and his parents on the occasion of his seventh birthday

America is clearly balkanizing. It is a nation of red states and blue states, not just in politics but in every way conceivable, from sports to music to art and even to public health. The Southern, Midwestern and Western states are essentially battling the rest of the country just to see who’s more macho, even at the risk of death.

How long will this sad condition last? How can it last? The plain truth is that it won’t; the 2022 and 2024 elections will do much to determine if the USA continues as a democracy or recedes into an unpleasant dictatorship reminiscent of the worst ones of the 20th century. To a large extent, it is already an oligarchy of the few haves separating themselves from the have-nots to the point of shooting themselves into space—in quest of what, I don’t know.

There has never been a more urgent time to speak up and speak out.

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