Racial disharmony upsets a small town

LITITZ, Pa. - This small Lancaster County town is prosperous and quaint, with a line of antiques stores along its main street. It is not a place with many minorities, or one where you might expect to find many pickups sporting Confederate flags.

But on Oct. 3, 12 white students, some wearing Confederate-flag clothing, taunted three minority students at a flagpole in front of Warwick High School, where only 28 of the 1,600 students are black.

Three of the perpetrators threw wadded paper and hard candy and yelled racial slurs, including the n-word.

The flag-wearers were part of a clique whose line of trucks in the parking lot students have unofficially dubbed "redneck row." One of those students, senior Tim Rohr, 17, said Friday that the incident, in which he said he did not take part, was overblown.

"They took it the wrong way," he said in the lot, where he usually parks his red '84 Dodge Ram with a "Redneck" sticker on the windshield and a Confederate-flag license plate. The pickup was in the shop that day.

But Erik Cora, 14, one of the boys who was taunted, said he is afraid to go to school and stayed home on Friday because he said some students were giving him dirty looks.

"I'd like to leave," said the freshman, whose family moved from Lancaster last year.

Lingering symbols of racism have been brandished around the country in recent months. In Jena, La., nooses were hung from a tree at a school, inciting months of racial tensions and protests, and nooses were found on a professor's door at Columbia University's Teachers College, in a Long Island police locker room, and at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy.

To many African Americans, the message behind the Confederate flag is just as potent.

"It can have a dual significance, but usually it only has one: a stealth anti-black meaning," said Brian Levin, who runs the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.

Some people feel the Warwick teens were trying to imitate the white students in Jena, and others believe it was a reaction to the trickle of minorities into Lititz.

"It's a few kids doing stupid things," said Tom Groth, who runs a guitar studio in town. "All the kids who come here get along with everybody."

The high school dust-up set off a string of episodes that has the community questioning its peaceful image.

"Perhaps we were lulled into a false sense that our school district was immune to racism and bigotry," Superintendent John George told parents at a meeting at Warwick on Oct. 8. Seven percent of students in the district are minorities.

On Oct. 10, the day the three 16-year-old students were charged with disorderly conduct, a 17-year-old Warwick student was arrested on the same charge after allegedly harassing a black woman who was picking up her child at Lititz Elementary School. The student, who is white, followed the woman into the school office, where he uttered racial slurs, police said.

On Oct. 9, another 16-year-old from Warwick was charged with making terrorist threats after he allegedly yelled, "Let's burn the school down," as police conducted security checks.

And on Oct. 5, a 17-year-old Warwick student yelled profanities in the school parking lot and was charged with disorderly conduct.

The school has disciplined the students, increased security, banned Confederate flags, and launched a comprehensive plan to recover from the "divisive acts of hate" to instill a culture of tolerance, according to the district Web site.

George declined to be interviewed, but spokeswoman Lori Zimmerman said the district was focusing on "respect training" for students, parents, staff and the community. It also plans to install a rapid phone-notification system to alert families of trouble after rumors circulated on Oct. 4 that a child had taken a gun to school.

Zimmerman insisted that the district had been proactive in trying to prevent such problems, but said, "I believe that people sometimes don't recognize these things in themselves or their community."

The district maintains that those who have Confederate-flag images on clothing or automobiles are protected under the First Amendment, but courts have ruled that such images can be banned when associated with violence.

Zimmerman declined to say how students were disciplined, citing privacy laws, but Erik Cora's father, Erasmo Cora Jr., said he learned that the teens who bothered his son were suspended. He wants them expelled.

"My kid is suffering, and they should suffer, too," he said in the kitchen of his newer two-story Colonial outside the borough limits.

Erik said he and two friends were at the flagpole before school when the white students started throwing things at them. When Erik and his friends told them to stop, the white kids hurled insults, and the three boys left, he said.

They didn't tell anyone, but the next day rumors spread that there would be a fight and that someone had a gun, according to the district. A teacher heard about it and told administrators, who called police and interviewed the boys.

Cora and his wife, Carmen, said they were angry that the school had not contacted them. They think administrators turned a blind eye to racial tensions.

"They had a whole row of parking spaces, and nobody was allowed to park there if they didn't have that flag. You can't tell me that wasn't a problem," said Erasmo Cora, who is from Puerto Rico.

Suzanne Hill, mother of another of the boys who was taunted, said this was not the first racial incident at the school. Her older daughter said someone scrawled insults on her locker a few years ago.

"I wish they had done something about it and not let it escalate," said Hill, who has seven children, three of whom are biracial, and who drives a bus for the district.

Cora and Hill said that their sons were friends with black and white students and that they had never been involved in anything like this before.

As students walked through Lititz's quaint streets on their way home from school, many said they were sad and surprised at the controversy, and that the majority of students got along.

Samantha Lepard, 16, who is half Puerto Rican, said that after the dust-up, people didn't know what to say. So they put up signs expressing their feelings, such as "All men are created equal" and "For only love can conquer hate."

"It strengthened a lot of relationships between black and white students," she said.

The Coras said they knew they were moving to a predominantly white community but wanted to get away from urban problems in Lancaster.

"We think maybe the schools are better," said Carmen Cora, who is from the Dominican Republic. "What do we find? Racism."