Thursday, April 15, 2004 | 11 a.m.
As a first-grader in Huntsville, Ala., in 1963, David Osman, the only black in his school, talked two older and larger boys out of beating up a younger child.
Then 6 years old, Osman, now a Las Vegan, had already walked into history by being one of the first four black students to integrate Alabama public schools, but that day made a deeper impression in one way.
During a visit to Huntsville 35 years later, Osman was approached at a mall by a man who thanked him for intervening.
"He told me I changed his life and everything he thought about black people from that point on," said Osman, a nurse who is the discharge and long-term placement coordinator for University Medical Center. "It was gratifying because I have dedicated my life to unity, to bringing people together."
On Friday morning Osman will be reunited in Huntsville with Sonnie Hereford, Veronica Pearson and John Anthony Brewton -- the first four black students to integrate Alabama's public school system.
They will attend a ceremony for the placement of a historical marker honoring the young pioneers of the Civil Rights Movement.
It was the peaceful desegregation of Huntsville schools on Sept. 9, 1963, following a federal court order, that led to integration of schools statewide and elsewhere -- integrations that often were marred by violence.
"I really had no idea what was going on at that time," said Osman, who also is director of the nonprofit group Nevada Youth Alliance, which sponsors youth sports and operates a mentoring program and other social activities.
"I was an unknowing participant in the human rights movement, holding on to the reassuring hands of my father (late civil rights worker Cleveland Osman). I had great faith he would guide me safely through what was happening."
Osman said he remembers police lining the path to the school the first day, but there was no incident there or at the other three schools, including the former Fifth Avenue School, the site where the historical marker sponsored by the On the Front Lines of History Committee will be affixed.
Osman also recalled how Gov. George Wallace had pledged to personally prevent the desegregation of schools in his state. But Huntsville was different.
"Huntsville was nestled in the right place at the right time for the Civil Rights Movement," Osman said, noting that the eyes of the world were on that city because of its space and rocket technology center, where scientists from around the world worked amid an integrated staff producing machinery for NASA.
Today that facility is known as NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, which is involved in such projects as the Space Shuttle and International Space Station.
"This was a unique area (of the South) and everyone, including the (Ku Klux) Klan, knew the economic importance for a peaceful transition," Osman said. "There was too much at stake if we lost that technology center. If not acceptance, there was tolerance for what was happening in the schools."
Osman said he was brought up in a home with his sister Deborah and late brother Anthony that taught peace and love for mankind. While Osman said he watched 1960s' news reports of police turning high-pressure fire hoses on protesting blacks -- and was angered by it -- he never hated the haters.
The story of Huntsville's desegregation was captured on 8mm home movies by Sonnie Hereford's father Dr. Sonnie Hereford, the Osmans' family physician.
Throughout the 1960s, Dr. Hereford traveled the South filming civil rights marches and other events. He later compiled the footage into the acclaimed 1999 documentary "A Civil Rights Journey."
In 2002 Osman brought Hereford to Las Vegas to show his film and speak at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and at several local public schools.
Hereford has been lauded as the leader of what is considered one of the most successful protests in American civil rights history.
In the early 1960s he and the Community Services Commission sued the Huntsville School Board on behalf of his son and other black children. Hereford's support of nonviolent means won over some desegregation opponents.
"One big reason school districts today embrace teaching the Huntsville example is because the desegregation of schools was done without violence," Osman said. "It represents a unique symbolism of peaceful transition amid the struggle. It immortalizes people who coexisted and endured."
Osman graduated from the Huntsville school system and later from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga with a degree in ethnic studies. He returned to Alabama and in 1985 earned his nursing degree from Calhoun Community College.
Osman came to Las Vegas 15 years ago and went to work for UMC in 1993. In 1996 he founded the Nevada Youth Alliance, which has received numerous service awards, including the 2002 FBI Director's Community Leadership Award.
The organization sponsors the NFL's Punt, Pass and Kick competition and Major League Baseball's Pitch, Hit and Run event. It also runs the Above and Beyond mentoring program and the Get High on Kicks Not Drugs program, among others.
While Osman is proud of the small role he played in the Civil Rights Movement, he is not totally satisfied by what he sees today as far as its progress.
He laments that many civil rights commemoration events in Southern Nevada are held only in the black community and only during Black History Month -- or on Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday -- with very few whites in attendance.
"It irks me to no end to see that because it shows that we are not living Dr. King's dream of coming together," Osman said. "When I brought Dr. Hereford to Las Vegas we had diverse audiences. At his party at UNLV 300 people from all races attended. But that rarely is what happens here.
"I hope to see diversity at Friday's ceremony in Huntsville -- 50-50 would be great. And don't think I won't get up and say something about unity and diversity if it is not a diverse audience."
Osman also says that while schools everywhere are integrated, there is still a lot of work to do integrating communities and otherwise achieving unification.
"The steps we are taking are in the right direction, but sometimes those steps are taken in words only," Osman said. "Action is what is needed and action is what is yet to come."
archive
