By Barbara Morris
Growing up in Laurelton during the Great Depression was an interesting experience. It was a huge challenge for our parents. Employers, like our father’s, wanted to be fair and wanted to maintain their knowledgeable staffs but, at the same time, they needed as much rebuilding money as possible to keep the company afloat. Employees were told that if they would agree to work unpaid, at least for a specific period of time, their employment would be guaranteed when the desperate financial crunch had passed. Our dad agreed to do that.
To sustain our own family, because he had a beautiful baritone voice, he worked evenings and weekends — whenever jobs were available — singing. Working two jobs wasn’t easy but he not only managed that, he also helped organize a civic group because homeowners from the newly established part of the community, north of what was then called Merrick Road, were not welcome to join the organization south of Merrick Road.
It was not a matter of racial or religious diversity, it was because our homes had changed the appearance of their community. There was now less open space and they didn’t like that. Our homes were, generally, smaller and with less property than those in “Old Laurelton,” and they didn’t like that either, from what we were told. We understood how they felt because people often do not like change, especially if they were happy the way they were before the change took place.
Obedience of our laws and respect for the rights of others was the order of the day back then. Since there were few mothers who worked away from their own homes, as they walked their children to and from PS 156 they would give the folks on the south side of Merrick Road friendly greetings and were happy to have those greetings welcomed and returned. Classmates became friendly after school and that also brought both sides closer together.
By the time World War II came, many more separations were washed away. We all began to work with one accord — to protect and defend our country and to help our neighbors.
While I was still attending PS 156, the school’s first black teacher was hired. She was our cooking and homemaking teacher. Her name was Miss Moore. She told us she was there to teach us to measure carefully and to double-check everything whenever we used a tested recipe.
The kitchen gleamed and we were all anxious to learn how to cook something “on our own” so that we could surprise our families with some kind of delicious treat. We learned how to make applesauce, baking powder biscuits and tapioca pudding. Even more important than that, my classmates learned what I had learned years earlier from another black lady who was a longtime friend of our family — people are people — and both of those ladies were absolutely wonderful.
When the civil rights movement began, I felt that we should welcome to this community anyone willing to obey the laws and respect the rights of others and I worked hard to achieve those goals. Luckily, a lot of our neighbors also felt the same way. Laurelton was lauded as the way integration should take place, in spite of an initial, upsetting bout with “block busting.”
For a while, we had achieved the racial balance the government had sought for us. Then, much to the displeasure of everyone in the community, drugs and other crime moved in and chased away all but the most stubborn of both white and black families, leaving this community again racially unbalanced. Some of the black families who were among the first to come, and who stayed, often tell me that they liked it as it was then — with the wonderful Jewish bakeries and delicatessens, with the separate clothing stores for children, ladies and men’s wear, the hardware store, the Italian restaurant and the elegant, sit-down Chinese restaurant.
Some members of our mostly black community wish this would become an all-black community and don’t hesitate to tell us that. Luckily, they are, at present, not the majority so those of us who have been stubborn enough to stay will continue to give friendly greetings and be happy to have some folks accept them and return them to us.
Remember Sept. 11 and be kind to each other. That is the tested recipe for a successful community.
