AUBURN - Visitors were invited to city hall Wednesday night to review the nearly 400 posted essays, poems and art for Black History Month.

Most who overflowed the hall's chambers to attend the Auburn Human Rights Commission's celebration, believed the elementary- and middle-school students were heroes too.

“I'm really happy and surprised that the kids chose people who were not famous, as well as those who are,” AHRC volunteer Joy Richardson said. “You'd expect Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglas. But they also chose some people from the community: teachers, athletes. They went outside of the class and did research on their own.”

Indeed, there along the pages fitted one to another covering the wall were names such as distinguished local football player Quendel Ellison and elementary school teacher Cynthia Richardson - along with Denzel Washington, Ray Charles and Elijah McCoy.

Every student in the Auburn School District who participated in the program received a certificate of accomplishment. Those whose work was selected for publication were called up front during the commemoration to additionally be presented with a T-shirt from AHRC commissioner Frederick Richardson and Auburn Mayor Tim Lattimore.

Inscribed on the T-shirt is the message “We're all the same inside.”

Destinee Frink, a fifth grader at Seward Elementary, who received a shirt, couldn't agree more. Her essay on Martin Luther King Jr., she said, affirmed what she feels inside.

“I can follow his dream and I can follow my dream, because my dream is we should all be created equal,” Frink said.

The writing and art program is often the only opportunity for white children to get to know black people, according to Cynthia Richardson, who retired in 2006 after teaching first and second grade in Auburn schools for 37 years.

“It expands their knowledge of things they don't ordinarily find in the textbook or in social studies class - and not just in February,” she said. “When you go home, if there's not a black person next door, you don't see them cooking collard greens, black-eyed peas. You don't get to know what they're like. They (students) saw me from day to day. They saw what I wore, how I acted. I remember early on, a young child tried to rub the black off my skin. She had never been near a black person, only saw them in pictures, or on TV.”

Academically, Richardson believes there is room for improvement regarding education of black history. As a black teacher, she was sure to include it in her classes. However, the Auburn district, she said, has only three black teachers, one of whom is a substitute.

“For years we've been pushing for minority recruitment,” she said. “The past couple of years, they've been trying harder. But Auburn is difficult, because the industries are not here anymore. If the wife is a teacher, where does the husband work? We need the doctors, we need the lawyers, the dentists.”

Recruitment of black teachers is highly competitive, with the Auburn School District being fairly successful, according to AHRC commissioner Richardson. However, he said, like most districts, the curriculum is lacking in regard to black studies.

Hence, the necessity of such programs as the writing and art in a black history program.

“They wouldn't have to have Black History Month. Many blacks, like myself, wish we didn't have to celebrate it - because they don't teach it in school,” he said, following the ceremony.

Regarding Auburn community minority relations, Lattimore considered the standing-room only event an outstanding example of how the city is committed to achieving equality. He also said sports and other community venues provide opportunities to break down stereotypes.

“As a child growing up, the playgrounds were full of Auburnians. It's unfortunate the playgrounds aren't being used - you had rich, poor, black, white. It would always provide faster respect for one another. We had gangs of kids that used to go to the YMCA. We used to have dances. Those barriers were broken down when we socialized.”

There on the wall of city hall, an essay written by Joey Marinelli, a sixth grader at East Middle School, on Ellison offered its own statement. Describing the many qualities Ellison taught his class during his visit. Marinelli concluded his essay: “It doesn't matter if you're black or white. The only thing that matters is how you live your life.”