"Frank Siracusa made a point of coming to school early. He lived with his wife and year-old daughter in a modest four-room apartment only a few short blocks from Franklin K. Lane High School, which straddles the border between Brooklyn and Queens in New York City. He had become accustomed to rolling out of bed at 7:30 A.M. and taking the two-minute walk to the school he had taught in since 1961. Siracusa was a thirty-yearold chemistry teacher with a jovial personality that made him a favorite among students and colleagues alike. There weren't many people on the 306-member faculty who were more popular than Frank Siracusa, and there was no reason for him to suspect that January 20, 1969, would be different from any other Monday morning.

In addition to his duties as a chemistry instructor, Siracusa doubled as the coordinator for school aides, the corps of thirty-four nonprofessional adults who helped supervise students in the school cafeteria, study rooms, and hallways. The police had been on duty at the school all of the previous week as a result of an agreement between District 19 Superintendent Elizabeth C. O'Daly and the school’s chapter of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), the union representing the city’s 60,000 teachers. There had been fifteen separate incidents of assault against white teachers by black students, and an even larger number of vicious and sadistic attacks by blacks against white students. It was all part of the aftermath of the Great School Strike which had ended just two months earlier.

But January 20, 1969, was to be a very different kind of day for Frank Siracusa, one that would see his picture on the front page of newspapers across the country and would raise serious doubts about integration in the nation’s public schools. Siracusa, very much involved with the life of the school, was a member of the school’s UFT executive committee and had been a recent speaker at a meeting of the Woodhaven-Cypress Hills Community Association. The association was a newly formed neighborhood group that came together to protest the growth of racial violence at the local high school. At its January 17 meeting, Siracusa had been one of the first speakers to expose the lawlessness which had become prevalent at Lane.

On the morning of January 20 Siracusa clocked in and went through his usual routine of checking the school aide roster and getting his materials in order for his first period class. It was only minutes before his morning class was scheduled to assemble when a stone came crashing through the window, shattering the glass and scattering fragments to all corners of his first-floor classroom. Cautiously, he approached the window, wary of yet another missile. Looking out at the courtyard he observed two black youths, about eighteen years of age: they were decked out in fashionable dashikis and sported the hairdo which had become the sign of black militancy. Siracusa thought about reporting the incident through the usual administrative channels, or of overlooking the matter entirely. Either way, the result would have been the same... the absence of any official response to student violence.

Many of his colleagues had, in fact, already thrown in the towel. They had been told to avoid confrontations with students. Don’t enforce the rules where black students are concerned, they were continually advised. Let the blacks “do their own thing!’ Don't compel them to produce identification cards! Don't require them to stand for the morning pledge of allegiance exercise even though it is required by state law! Don't make an issue over their refusal to remove their hats in the school building! And above all, remember these are changing times and are you sure you don't harbor racist attitudes? In a variety of ways, sometimes subtle, sometimes more direct, most of Lane's teachers had gotten that message from its own administration and from the central school board. In this turbulent era, the New York City school board wasn't even backing up its own principals. At any given time there were more than twenty of them cooling their heels at board headquarters after having been “promoted” to a desk job at 110 Livingston Street as a result of pressure from black militants. If a principal couldn’t expect the support of the school board on matters related to fundamental school discipline (no less violence and lawlessness), it followed that a principal wouldn't put his own neck on the line by sustaining a teacher who was foolish enough to try to break up a dice game or report a drug transaction on school premises. The name of the game for Lane’s teachers had become, “mind your own business and don't get involved” because, they learned, in New York’s tempestuous school system the axe most often fell not on the incompetent but on the dedicated teacher who tried to do an honest job for his day's pay.

But at Franklin K. Lane High School, and at countless other schools throughout the city, teachers were learning to look the other way. After all, if Mayor John V. Lindsay could tell the police to ignore the looting of stores during the Harlem riots and to do nothing while local residents carted off color TV sets, then it was perfectly clear that teachers couldn't engage in parapolice activities and expect the city’s support. But Frank Siracusa was one of the few who hadn’t been jaded by the strange thinking that permeated the highest levels of officialdom. Totally devoted to his school and its students, how could he ignore this transgression and maintain his self-respect? He put on his overcoat, descended the stairway adjacent to his room, and went on out to the courtyard. Slowly, he approached the two tall youngsters who by now were joined by a third youth, somewhat shorter and younger, but with as menacing a veneer as the older pair.

“T’m Mr. Siracusa,” he said quietly. “I’m a teacher, not a cop, and I would like to know who broke my window.”

There was no reply, no discussion, not even a denial or argument. In a flash, one of the youngsters drew a water pistol from his jacket pocket, spraying the teacher’s outer garments witha liquid which was later discovered to be a highly flammable lighter fluid. Siracusa was befuddled.

“What's this all about?” he thought to himself.

For a brief moment Siracusa figured it to be a juvenile prank, unaware that one of the trio was circling behind him. Suddenly, he felt a thunderous blow crashing into his spine. As he dropped to the ground, anguishing in pain, defenseless, he felt the smashing of fists against his jaw and the pounding of booted heels into his groin. Lying helpless on the cold concrete, barely conscious, he sensed the burning flames from his overcoat which had been set afire by his assailants, who then left him there as a potential immolation fatality. Desperately, he struggled to get out of the overcoat, which was soon fully ablaze. Although suffering excruciating pain from the pounding he had received, Siracusa miraculously crawled out of the burning garment, and screaming for help, was found and carried to safety by colleagues responding to his cries.

A brand new chapter had been written into the annals of racial strife in the public schools, less than fifteen years after the United States Supreme Court spoke out against the doctrine of racial separatism in public educational systems."

https://archive.org/details/harold-saltzman-race-war-in-high-school/page/16/mode/2up