Neighbors recognized MLK Day nearly 60 years after his visit

Not just children of color, all children need to know the history of this country.”

Doris Hicks Newkirk

Martin Luther King Jr. walked down Woodfield Road to lead a peace march in the Malverne school district. Now, 59 years later, the community celebrated his lasting legacy.

“That’s why we’re going to celebrate the importance of Dr. King’s visit here, to continue with living in peace and harmony with our schools integrated,” Doris Hicks Newkirk, president of the Lakeview branch of the NAACP, said. “The importance to me is that we’ve come so far. This community has come so very far.

“And I believe we probably still have some ways to go, but I just pray that we stay at least the way we are, and better.”

Before 1966, the Malverne school district was heavily segregated. White children mostly went to Davison Avenue or Maurice W. Downing Primary School — then named Lindner Place School after Paul Lindner, a prominent Ku Klux Klan member — while Black children primarily went to Woodfield Road School. When, more than a decade after Brown v Board of Education was passed, the district was ordered to desegregate; there was significant backlash from the Malverne community.

Segregation is not ancient history — it’s living memory.

Frederick Brewington, a civil rights lawyer of Lakeview, was one of the first Black students to attend Davison Avenue. He remembers fellow 9-year-olds holding signs protesting the school’s integration, he told the Atlantic in a 2020 feature. He also recalls the way white parents treated Black parents.

Hicks Newkirk’s own father, she said, had to work very hard to make sure his children had the access to education that he didn’t have. “We have to tell our children,” Hicks Newkirk said, “not just children of color, all children need to know the history of this country so that they can say, ‘you know what, people have suffered and worked hard to get us where we are.’”

Students, parents and civic leaders came together at Malverne High School last Thursday to celebrate how far the community has come. 

“As a mother raising a Black boy, this day provides inspiration, hope, motivation, and representation of a man that looks like my son,” Nicole Henderson, a Malverne Board of Eduction member, said. “Learning about Dr. King and other men in inspiring roles will deter him from believing that opportunities are not possible to young Black and brown children like himself.”

MLK day, Hicks Newkirk said, is about recognizing the struggle of civil rights and the progress that has been made since. Lindner Place, for example, was renamed to Acorn Way last year thanks to a student-led project.

“Dr. King was a uniting force in world history,” Tim Sullivan, the mayor of Malverne, said. “And at this place in time, he’s a figure that we should remember and reflect upon, and apply it to today’s difficulties, because our world and our country should live by some of the lessons that he taught.”

Some, however, worry that those lessons are being forgotten. Hate crimes, especially those rooted in race, rose in 2022, according to a U.S. Department of Justice report released in October. Segregation in education and housing, inequitable school funding, and a racial wealth homeownership gap — some of the very things Dr. King fought against — still persist, Laura Harding, president of ERASE Racism, noted in a statement.

“People have suffered, people have died for the right to vote, the right to live equally,” Hicks Newkirk said. “And if we don’t tell the history, things can get totally, totally turned around.

“That’s why we have to keep teaching the history. I want (children of color) to know what we’ve gone through because they have to keep going. They have to keep going to school. They have to keep fighting for equal rights for voting. They must know that that was something that was so hard fought for.”

“Understanding our history will encourage respect and acceptance of others, improve the understanding of the needs of disenfranchised groups, and provide opportunities to strategies for action and change,” Henderson said. “These historic teachings incite ideas from our young scholars on ways they can make a difference, creating leaders of tomorrow and future activists.”

King’s legacy is valuable to everyone, regardless of background, community leaders said.

“Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s leadership and courage bent the arc of history toward greater equity for all Americans,” county legislator Siela Bynoe, who represents Malverne and Lakeview, said in a statement. “His commitment to nonviolent resistance has inspired generations of social justice advocates and public servants to embrace his model of advocacy."

Neighbors across Lakeview and Malverne are in the beginning stages of planning a celebration next year to commemorate the 60th anniversary of King’s peace march down Woodfield Road. To them, MLK day is more than an extra day off work, or an obligatory Social Studies lesson — it’s their lived history.