enlarge Photos by Gordon Chibroski/Staff Photographer

Benjamin Jealous, NAACP president, speaks Monday at Deering High School in Portland, as Rachel Talbot Ross listens. His father graduated from Deering in 1959. In 2006, Deering students said racially offensive talk was common at the school.

enlarge

Sophomore Grayce Butler-Dawson takes part in a discussion after the speech. A key to change, she said, would be to diversify the cliques that dominate social life at Deering.

enlarge

Students applaud as Benjamin Jealous, the youngest-ever NAACP president at 35, speaks Monday at Deering High School in Portland. He urged them to use their youthful energy to fight for justice and understanding in their communities.

Benjamin Jealous was 14 when he launched a get-out-the-vote drive in support of civil rights leader and presidential hopeful Jesse Jackson.

Later, he was kicked out of Columbia University for leading protests. He then headed to Mississippi to help save two of the state's historically black colleges from closure.

On Monday, the youngest-ever president of the NAACP urged more than 1,000 high school students in Portland to use their youthful energy to fight for justice and understanding in their communities.

"We don't need you when you're 40, or 60, or 70 – we need you right now," said Jealous, 35, who took over as NAACP president in September.

He mixed stories of his life experiences with a call to action during a schoolwide assembly at Deering High School, part of a daylong visit to Maine during which he also lobbied state corrections officials for a new program at the Maine State Prison and spoke to the public at the University of Southern Maine.

His appearance at Deering was significant for two reasons. His father, Fred Jealous, graduated from the school in 1959. And it was at Deering that students in 2006 told researchers that racially offensive language was common in their classrooms and hallways.

The Portland-based Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence, which conducted the 2006 study, reported a similar situation at Portland High School later that year.

Since then, educators at both schools have worked with the center to change students' behavior. They saw the Jealous visit as a teachable moment, timely because of the racially charged incidents that followed the election of the nation's first black president.

Mainers found effigies of black men hanging from trees, racist graffiti along a popular trail and a sign in a general store advertising bets on when President-elect Barack Obama would be assassinated, part of a rash of acts nationwide over the past month.

Jealous encouraged students to speak out against the recent acts of intolerance – to be "rowdy" if necessary. "Do you stand on the line of silence?" he asked during the 15-minute speech in the school's gymnasium.

Teachers led group discussions about the talk afterward. Shana Paradis, an English teacher who advises the school's civil rights team, said the seeds for acts of bias that make headlines are planted with the type of slurs uttered too frequently at Deering.

"It doesn't just happen in a vacuum," Paradis said.

She asked students to challenge – in private, one-on- one – peers who direct hateful language at others.

Deering sophomore Grayce Butler-Dawson was part of the group that discussed the speech with Paradis. The 15-year-old said one key to change would be to diversify the cliques that dominate social life at Deering.

She said groups of friends at the school are too often homogenous – whites associate with whites, blacks with blacks, Asians with Asians. Butler-Dawson, who is black, said students with more diverse groups of friends are more likely to speak out in the face of racism.

"If you have enough courage to reach out to somebody if you try, then something can be accomplished," she said.

Jealous' visit also attracted students from other Portland schools. Domonique Berry-Huffman, a 15-year-old sophomore at Casco Bay High School, said she remembers the name-calling she endured in elementary school as a half-white, half-black student.

Berry-Huffman, a member of her school's civil rights team, said she's noticed a change in attitudes during her own life and says the offensive comments have faded over the past few years. She said she was disappointed the recent racially charged incidents targeting Obama tainted an election that otherwise signaled a giant leap forward in American race relations.

"We're trying to go forward, but the people who are doing that are making us take a step back," she said.

Staff Writer Elbert Aull can be contacted at 791-6325 or at:

eaull@pressherald.com