TOM DORSEY / The Salina Journal Allen J. Correll, executive director of the Tacoma Human Rights Department, speaks Friday at a luncheon about eliminating violence and racism.

She was happy-go-lucky, in pigtails and a new dress, excited about her first day going to a new elementary school. She skipped toward the entrance, paying little attention to the crowd of onlookers whose faces differed from her own.

The year was 1960, the place was Tupelo, Miss., the girl was black, and Correll was among a group of college students from Kansas who had arrived to show support for desegregating the schools. Correll's hands were sweaty from nervousness as he scanned the mostly white crowd.

Suddenly a white woman stepped from the throng, holding a brick in her hand. She hurled the brick at the child and it smacked her in the face. People screamed as the girl fell to the sidewalk.

"What makes a people so evil to hurt a child doing nothing wrong?" asked Correll as he spoke Friday to an audience at the Bicentennial Center. To this day, Correll only knows the girl was treated at a hospital but doesn't know what became of her.

Correll, executive director of the Tacoma, Wash., Human Rights Department, has worked in the field of civil rights for 33 years. After graduating from the University of Kansas, he studied at Washburn University, Topeka, and at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.

He's received numerous awards for his service and has been a consultant to the White House on civil rights enforcement. His appearance at Friday's luncheon culminated the YWCA of Salina's Week Without Violence observance.

Parents play a major role

Correll said parents play a major role in ending youth violence. A lack of interest in their children and a lack of discipline over their behavior contribute to lawlessness.

When Correll was little, he said, there was no need for a curfew. All the kids in the neighborhood knew when their moms flipped on the porch light to scramble back home as fast as possible or suffer the consequences.

For a teen-ager to display a Nazi swastika flag in his room and wear heavy, black boots in the style of a storm trooper to school and a parent not being aware of that, "the parents have to be doing something else and not dealing with their number one priority, their children," Correll said.

Violent youth stem as much from a lack of moral instruction at home as they do from parental discipline, he said. There was no choice about going to church when he was growing up, and there was no letup, as well, in his mother's expectation about his grades at school.

Demanding excellence of youth, Correll said, is like mountain climbing.

"It's very easy to get to the base. The climb to the top takes hard work."