CLOSTER — Hillside Elementary School third- and fourth-graders sat quietly last week as they listened to Theodore Lacey speak of growing up in the segregated South. Lacey, a retired Teaneck Public School teacher, personally knew both Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks and imparted to the young audience the message of both monumental historical figures.

That message: that everyone is capable of making a difference in the world.

Telling the children a story of a wise old man who visited a town called "Grudgeville," Lacey described the residents of the town as heavy hearted and weighed down by their inability to forgive. The wise man taught the residents five words that changed their world: "I am sorry, I forgive."

Lacey said the story reminded her of her hometown of Montgomery, Ala., which could have been called "Prejudiceville," she said.

"People could not see each other. They saw people differently if the color of their skin was different," she said.

Lacey told the students of a neighborhood girl who was white, whom she used to play with in her yard. Soon the parents of that girl stopped allowing the girl to play with Lacey because of their different skin color.

In her hometown, said Lacey, African-Americans were forbidden from attending schools that white people attended, not allowed to drink from the same water fountains and forced to give up their seats on a bus if a white person needed them.

The wheels of change were set in motion on the historic day her mother’s friend, Rosa Parks, "decided she was not going to get up" from her seat on the bus, said Lacey.

"And if [Parks] was here today she would want you to know that it was not just because her feet were tired. Her soul was tired. She was tired of the treatment she had been receiving so she refused to get up out of her seat," Lacey said.

About a year later a wise man came to Montgomery, said Lacey, and like the figure in the story, he taught people how to think differently. The man was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who came to work at a Baptist Church where Lacey’s father was president of the board of trustees.

"He taught people to be respectful of one another and not treat people negatively based on the color of their skin. [He dreamt his children would] not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character," Lacey said, quoting one of King’s famous lines.

Looking around at an audience that has never experienced segregation, Lacey asked the students why the message of Dr. King is still pertinent today.

"It is your responsibility to remember this story," she answered. "So that if you ever come in contact with anyone… that attempts to treat someone differently because of where they were born or the color of their skin, you can stand up and say that is not right," said Lacey. "You can start practicing right now," she said.

Speaking of the changes made since the 1960s, Lacey thinks Dr. King would be "disturbed that we haven’t gone as far as he would have hoped we would by 2008."

Despite our global world in which technology unites us, Lacey said, "in many ways we are more divided." Therefore she wants young people to feel a sense of unity so they can understand people from different backgrounds.

"Because we are so diverse we can’t hide in our little cocoons and try not to deal with people who are different from us," she said.

Describing King as a "brilliant" man who achieved great things and won many awards, Lacey said he would not want to be remembered by the awards he won.

He would rather be known as "someone who cared and loved other people and attempted to clothe the naked, feed the hungry and attempted to be fair," she said.

E-mail: wilde@northjersey.com or call 201-894-6706