‘I Was Brought Up On Action:’ Freeport Residents Take Leadership Roles In Anti-Racism Nonprofit

FREEPORT, NY. — While local elections took place across Long Island in November, the early days of December brought the election to new leadership positions for Lorna Lewis and Wilma Tootle, who were elected as Co-Chair and Secretary, respectively, of Syosset-based nonprofit ERASE Racism.

Founded in 2001, ERASE Racism is a 501(c)3 dedicated to achieving racial equality on Long Island. According its mission statement, ERASE Racism seeks, “To expose forms of racial discrimination, advocate for laws and policies that eliminate racial disparities, increase understanding of how structural racism and segregation impact our communities and region, and engage the public in fostering equity and inclusion.”

The nonprofit seeks to further that mission through research, public education, policy advocacy, legal actions and civic engagement. Most prominent among the areas where ERASE Racism works are education and housing, both areas where Lewis and Tootle have ample experience. During its history, actions taken by the organization include the filing of grievances with the Department of Housing and Urban Development on housing discrimination grounds, the production of documentary films about education inequality on Long Island, and the organization of education events for both youth and adults on the ways institutional racism impact life today.

Lewis will serve as co-chair with Joan K. Lange, succeeding now-former co-chairs of the organization Kalpana Bhandarkar and Ed Pichardo. Tootle will join ERASE Racism’s leadership corps as secretary, while treasurer Lauren Furst and assistant treasurer Craig J. Wolfson will retain their titles under the new administration.

Both Lewis and Tootle have spent over 15 years with ERASE Racism, spending their professional careers as teachers and then school administrators. Lewis taught physics and math for 15 years before becoming the chair of the science department and assistant principal in the Rockville Centre School District, eventually becoming assistant superintendent in Three Village and then Superintendent in East Williston.

“I've done every part of the work from the classroom teacher to building administrator to central office administrator, the work has been deep and I've been committed to the field for a very long time,” Lewis said. “When I retired, I had spent 47 years as an educator. And in certain ways, I'm still an educator, you know? You never give that up.”

Tootle is an Autaugaville, AL native who came to New York in 1970 to teach English and Social Studies in Hempstead. She then became Dean of Girls at Hempstead High School before spending 21 years as an administrator in Uniondale. In that district, Tootle was an assistant principal, principal and director of personnel before her retirement.

Both women also have decades of experience in advocacy and volunteer work. Tootle has served as president of the Long Island chapter of the National Coalition of 100 Black Women (NCBW), as well as the NCBW ethics committee chair and NGO representative to the United Nations. In that role, Tootle created STEM education mentorship programs and conferences for young girls of color, who she said didn’t always have mentors that showed them what their lives could be like.

For Lewis, advocacy work led her to become the first woman of color to head the New York State Council of School Superintendents (NYCOSS), which represents over 800 administrators across the state, and work as a founding member of the organization’s Commission on Diversity and Inclusivity. In her time with ERASE Racism, Lewis said, she has worked as a liaison to superintendents across New York, encouraging them to bring the ideals of equity and inclusion — central to ERASE Racism’s mission — into their districts.

Tootle said in a Friday conversation with Patch that, “I think the spirit of advocacy was born in me,” recalling the day she — a perfect attendance student for almost her entire high school career — skipped school to travel 12 miles to see Stokely Carmichael speak at her home county’s seat in Alabama. Tootle also recalled the day she helped organize a walkout at her high school, planned for the day of a superintendent’s visit.

“As a person in segregated schools, we only saw the white male superintendent once a year, and that's when he would come and visit the schools and ask nothing about education,” Tootle said. “We'd have to stop our classes — and I'm just thinking about this now — for days, to scrub and make sure the school was clean and whatnot, because that's all they wanted to see. So we decided in my senior year that when he came, we were just going to walk out en masse and march around the school, to let him know that it was more to us than showing clean floors and clean black boards, that we wanted more than that.”

When asked how it felt to have been made co-chair, Lewis said the title was secondary to what it would allow her to work on: continued efforts to promote equity in education and housing.

“Well, you know, it's not about the title from me. It's about what I can do to impact. The work. I'm called at this time because I'm needed, and I'm happy to step up,” Lewis said. “The goal is to continue to expand our work in the housing area. Certainly, affordable housing is a priority for us, and making sure that those new constructions are accessible to people who are struggling in this economy, but also, most important for me as an educator, as a retired educator, is to make sure that the work in the schools is expanded and that there are more individuals participating.”

For Tootle, the opportunity to work as secretary at ERASE Racism is the opportunity to further a mission that spoke to her.

“I was overly honored and privileged to be asked to serve on the board for the first time two years ago, so I was fully aware of the mission and the vision through all of those years serving as a volunteer,” Tootle said. “The mission and the purpose resonated with me, because — from the time I was a little girl — if it was advocacy, if it was dealing with helping to make a better world in terms of race and ethnicity, I grew up with that. Those were a part of the core of my growing up as a young girl in the South.”

Finally, both women said the current political climate surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion makes the nonprofit’s antiracism work especially important. In the early days of his presidency, President Donald Trump signed three executive orders labeling diversity, equity and inclusion practices “illegal and immoral,’ while the nonprofit seeks to eliminate barriers to racial equity.

“Well, it is more important now than ever to have this work continued. I can't tell you how important it is. And we have to fill the gap, it is important for bringing students together, which is one of the major things that we do,” Lewis said. “We bring students from the whole spectrum of Long Island, from the very wealthy to the financially struggling districts, bringing kids together for the first time...finding how much commonality they had with each other. The bottom line is we are ‘more alike than we are unalike,’ as Maya Angelou always said. So it's a great opportunity for us to be able to bring students together. And I love the idea that I'm facilitating that effort.”

When it comes to their turns in leadership, ERASE Racism founder and president emerita Elaine Gross said the new corps of administrators, including Lewis and Tootle, leave the organization in good hands.

“ERASE Racism is grateful to the extraordinary leadership exhibited by its Board of Directors,
and the willingness of its members to fulfill different roles at different times,” Gross said. “We thank Kalpana Bhandarkar and Ed Pichardo for all that they have done and will continue to do for ERASE Racism, and we thank Lorna Lewis, Joan Lange, and Wilma Tootle for assuming their new roles at this crucial time for civil rights. ERASE Racism’s focus on overcoming structural racism to ensure equal rights for all is as vital as ever, and we look forward to their leadership in the years ahead.”