The Suffern High School History Team’s months-long historical odyssey ended at Cooperstown last Monday when the team placed third overall in the New York State History Day Finals competition. The Suffern team’s website, The Little Red School House: A Story of Desegregation, chronicles school desegregation in Hillburn, New York, piecing together archival photos and news stories with recent interviews of local residents.

The team, made up of Suffern High students Paige Bergstol, Blair Croce, Geena DiGiacomo, Amanda Gerzog and Jillian Stella, competed in the Group Website/Senior Division and devoted itself to this year’s reform theme by digging deep into important local lore. The winning Group Web Site presentation was given by Hauppauge High School and titled The Japanese Automobile Revolution and the American Response. Clarkstown South High School placed second with another civil rights themed effort, Reaching the Summit: How the Little Rock Nine Inspired a Revolution.

The Suffern History Team’s site is now live and available for public viewing and features important archival information about the Main and Brook schools in Hillburn. The team did much of its field work at the offices of the Rockland County Archives, culled information from Rockland County records and interviewed key people in the community who were able to provide important context to the Hillburn events. The site contains video clips with Rockland County Historian Craig Long, who discussed how building Rt. 17 divided the black and white communities in Hillburn; Brook School alumna Evelyn DeFreece; Historical Society of Rockland Trustee Dr. Travis Jackson; Sloatsburg Mayor Carl Wright; and Sloatsburg Village Historian and President of the Sloatsburg Historical Society Harrison Bush.

Hillburn in the early 1940s had two schools, the Brook School, attended by Ramapo black children, and the Main School, the all-white school. The Main School site now serves as headquarters for the Ramapo School District. Thurgood Marshall took up a disparity case on behalf of Hillburn’s black residents and won, which led directly to the integration of the schools of Hillburn. Brook School had no gym, library or indoor plumbing, while the Main School did. Marshall’s effort integrated the two schools 11 years before his landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education, and served as a precedent for that landmark case.

Brook School alumna Evelyn DeFreece discussed her experiences first riding the school bus as well as the seemingly arbitrary separation of black and white students in school.

“We were always separated, it’s just something that was passed down,” DeFreece said in an interview where she discusses the separation students in school, some friends and longtime neighbors. “Some of those people were related to us,” she said. “Through the years, they just ended up being white. But if they went back far enough, their roots were the same as ours.”

The team also interviewed Dr. Jackson, one of the first black teachers in Rockland County and who later served as principal of Suffern Middle School. Dr. Jackson recounted experiences playing basketball at recess at Hillburn school. “There was no running water in the school for students to wash their hands,” Jackson said. “We’d go across the street to the library but the librarian wouldn’t let us take out books because our hands were dirty.”

The state History Day competition in Cooperstown saw more than 430 students participating from around New York.  The Suffern Team competed with over 100 Senior Group Website entries beginning with regional competition back in March.

“Our students’ time and dedication paid off by being recognized as one of the state finalists,” said Suffern High School social studies teacher Richard Burger, who acted as the team’s faculty advisor, steering the students through the whole process and keeping them focused. Burger said Information Literacy Coordinator Rob Lyons and Librarian Dominick Martiniello both provided the team with invaluable support during revisions to the site over the past month.

The Suffern High School History Team students will present their project at an upcoming Ramapo Central Board of Education meeting.

Source: Suffern History Team Website 

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