Breaking racial barriers at every turn

Gibson, around age 20, at home in Clary Gardens, which is now part of the larger Old Lindenmere section of Merrick.

Courtesy Booker T. Gibson

Booker T. Gibson, witness to history

By his own admission, Booker T. Gibson wasn’t the most athletic student at Mepham High School in Bellmore in the 1940s, so becoming popular at a school that placed a high value on success in sports –– in particular, in wrestling –– was no easy feat. But, man, could Gibson play boogie-woogie piano, and at the time this highly rhythmic style of the blues ruled the airwaves.

So Gibson, a soft-spoken student musician with an electric smile and an easygoing personality, was wildly popular and became president of Mepham’s House of Representatives. “I became a star,” he said with a laugh during a recent interview at his comfortable North Merrick home.

Gibson’s senior yearbook features a photo of him standing beside a lectern before a semicircle of preppy student representatives, leading the class of 1948. His was the only black face in a room full of white teens.

Gibson, now 80, grew up as one of a handful of African-American children in predominately white Merrick, where an undercurrent of long-held racial stereotypes and prejudices, spoken and unspoken, ran through what was then a rural culture –– and, for that matter, the nation’s collective psyche.

Gibson, who retired as a music teacher in the Valley Stream Central High School District in 1986, has made his home in the Merricks for most of his life. Having served in the U.S. Air Force, he is now a respected member of Merrick American Legion Post No. 1282. Tom Riordan, a fellow post member, said Gibson has played a critical role in the group’s annual visits to the Northport Veterans Affairs Medical Center for more than a decade. “For a good number of years,” Riordan said, “Booker has been playing the piano for our comrades at Northport. We serenade them. He plays the piano. He has been an inspiration as far as our visits are concerned. He’s been an A-plus member” of the post.

Through the years, however, Gibson has faced social adversity, and has had to overcome a number of bumps on the long road to achieving equality with his white counterparts.

Making his way in the world