Transcript of full Robert Gray interview

BY JENNIFER BARRIOS | jennifer.barrios@newsday.com

My name is Robert Gray. I was born in Long Beach Memorial Hospital, July 13, 1951. I was raised by my mother and father to reach a hand out. Even now, if I see something wrong, I'm going to try to help. I don't know if that's what you call a community activist, that's what I may be. I became involved basically because I was taught by my parents that you do reach out. We just helped each other. We loved each other. We lived together. And I might add that wasn't all-black. I was born and raised in a community at a time when everybody needed everybody. We didn't have a difference to who you helped. As a 9-year-old, all I saw was people helping one another. I lived in a neighborhood that was really very concentrated, and people cared. It was just a different time. People cared. I find myself still caring a great deal about what happens to people.

No fear. Was there any fear about getting involved? No fear. Was there any doubt? Yeah, there was doubt. There was doubt when we were having meetings that would last all night, and there was doubt when we would do things that we had to worry about the police following us. Certain members of our own community that didn't believe what we were doing. Yeah, there was doubts. There were doubts when, I used to get calls every night, and primarily it was, 'Nigger, you're gonna die.' There was doubt. Because I believed it, and so did my parents. And we were in a time and an age when it was believable. And I lived in a city that at that time had strong feelings on race relations, and I might add, probably still does today.

My proudest moment was 1969, after all was said and done in the city of Long Beach as to the turmoil that we went through, some people asked me to speak on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. And when I looked out and saw my mother and father ... that look ... of pride and support. Even today it does it. Because I remember how my father and my uncle had to sit up all night and worry about whether or not they were going to kill me. So when the town came together and realized we had other things that we could be about, I felt that to be one of the proudest moments of my life, when I looked and saw my mother and father, who gave me hell for some of my activities, doing what I'm doing now, tears of joy. If you want to talk about legacy, what better than to die helping somebody? I've been involved in this struggle on Long Island since I was about 14, 13 years old. I am 56. Somebody told me it was going to get better. I don't see the better. So if I can help the better coming along, I'd rather do that than be an agent for discord.

We were on the railroad tracks, which is what our playground was. Three men came to us and said, 'Would you guys like a youth center?' A youth center, what's that? We're playing on tracks, man. Do we want a youth center? We said yes. It's better than playing on the tracks. We went to meetings. A year later we were digging for the floor of the building. That was one of the things we helped a lot.

Nineteen sixty-nine, in front of Long Beach High School, after a year of strife and turmoil and racism back and forth, we decided as black students, as African-American students, that we didn't feel like going to school anymore under these conditions. So we rallied at the flagpole and somehow the flag came down. Me being who I was at the time, the kids who filed the complaint ... and I still often wonder, how did these kids get so educated to file the complaint at Nassau County on nobody but me. They charged me with desecration of the American flag. And at that time I don't think it ever happened, and especially it never happened involving a young black on Long Island that I know of. The case had some notoriety. Nobody got charged but me. That was a fight my parents and I had to fight alone, we were going before a judge and jury and the whole nine yards, and my Lord Jesus Christ saved my butt there. There was a gentleman on the jury who had no idea what was going on. Nobody asked him where he worked. He worked for IBM and on his stop was Long Beach High School. And when they got on the stand, he knew of the wall they were speaking of, that they said they saw me do this over the wall. Until they got into jury deliberation, he was the only one who knew the wall was 12 feet tall. Because the judge had made it very clear that he was going to send me to jail for the whole seven years. So that was what I call Nasty County in those days. That's what it is, Nasty County. And even now, it got a little nicer but not as clean as it should be.

The CORE situation, my uncle handed over CORE to me when I was 17. We were able to secure some funds for the county of Nassau for one of the first buildings on Long Island [named] for Martin Luther King. Long Beach is a very small, idyllic town, and they don't want no static. We had the bridges raised up on us -- you cannot get in and out of Long Beach with all three bridges up. And those bridges were raised a lot during the sixties. So I look back on it now, living in Hempstead, being in Hempstead, being on the Island most of my life. I ask myself, 'What would Martin think about where we're at now?' Martin wouldn't be too happy. Not Nassau County. Martin wouldn't be too happy at all. What I've learned, I know he wouldn't be happy.

We fought for something we believed that should have happened. There's no reason why I should have had to go to school and pick up a book and not see one black face in the book. We knew there were black people out there doing something ... So we wanted to know these things. And we got to the point that we fought to know these things. And it wasn't just black against white. That is the greatest myth ever played. No. If it was ever that, we wouldn't have won. And I think we did some winning in all these. I think we did some winning with the school district, I know we did some winning with the recreation department, the police department. I've got some great friends out there, black and white. I'm 56 years old. They said to me some time ago that things were going to change. I haven't seen it. Not to a degree that we should be parading around the street, talking about "We Shall Overcome." Now if you've got your biz and you've got your house and you've got your IRAs and you're set, then maybe you did overcome. But we have not. And Martin, if he were alive today, [he]would say, "Yes, I agree."