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CORTLANDT, N.Y. Cortlandt does not mark Martin Luther King Jr. Day with parades and processions, but many residents will reflect on the change society experienced under King's leadership. The third Monday in January was declared a federal holiday in 1986, and King's name is in the top 20 most searched terms on the Internet of the weekend.
The day that we went onto the floor, onto the gallery, the roll call vote, and it passed in the Senate, we all went back to the organizing office in a nearby hotel in Washington and I was in the room with Martin Luther King, and young and handsome Jesse Jackson, and every great civil rights leader in the country was in that room, said Manna Jo Greene, about the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
She said from that moment on, I was empowered for life.
Greene is the environmental director for Clearwater and worked with King at various points during the civil rights movement as she lobbied for the Bridgeport, Conn. chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). CORE brought King to Bridgeport to speak and Greene was present during the passage of the Civil Rights Act in the Senate, as well as the August 1963 March on Washington.
We had a lock down in the high school, a lock down in the middle school and we had kids marching right in front of the high school on South Highland Avenue, so it was pretty tense during that period, said Carl Oechsner, a former Ossining school teacher and active member of the Croton Friends of History.
This man brought us out of the woods and began to sensitize our nation, he said. Were all brothers, were all immigrants, were all equal, the color of your skin, it just doesnt matter.
Oechsner said only when several area churches united, forming an interfaith council, did tensions begin to subside in Ossining. Oechsner was 24-years-old when he began teaching in Ossining in 1963, the same year as Kings historic March on Washington.
Memories of school desegregation are clear to residents who grew up in the Jim Crow south. I remember the first black student in my class, Regina, she was very polite and very sweet, but I think she was scared out of her wits because she was the only black kid in the class, said Rob Shepperson, a Croton-based illustrator who grew up in Ruston, Louisiana. Shepperson was in fifth grade when his school was desegregated.
I went back in 2002 or 2003, and I went to go speak to a few students at the high school, and the town is still divided as far as geographically, but the students were great. They all listened to the same music, and dressed the same and I sure walked away thinking, 'Wow, theyre cool', he said.
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