Junior High School Students Los Angeles County

As police continue to investigate the fistfight at a Palmdale intermediate school that left a 13-year-old student dead, community members called Monday for the immediate expulsion of the surviving 14-year-old boy. Some residents also criticized school officials for dismissing race as a possible motive in the fight at Juniper Intermediate School. Stephan Corson, who is black, died Friday after the fight with another eighth-grade student, who is white.

Najee Ali, the head of Project Islamic Hope, took a Greyhound bus from Crenshaw to Palmdale on Monday to hold a small but fiery news conference on the steps of the Palmdale School District headquarters. Ali is pressuring school officials to expel a white student involved in a middle school fistfight Nov. 19 that led to a black student's death.

Najee Ali, the head of Project Islamic Hope, took a Greyhound bus from Crenshaw to Palmdale on Monday to hold a small but fiery news conference on the steps of the Palmdale School District headquarters. Ali is pressuring school officials to expel a white student involved in a middle school fistfight Nov. 19 that led to a black student's death.

Najee Ali, the head of Project Islamic Hope, took a Greyhound bus from South-Central Los Angeles to this High Desert community Monday to hold a small but fiery news conference on the steps of the Palmdale School District headquarters. Ali, a self-proclaimed activist, is trying to pressure school officials to expel a white student involved in a middle school fistfight Nov. 19 that led to a black student's death.

Najee Ali, the head of Project Islamic Hope, took a Greyhound bus from South-Central Los Angeles to this High Desert community Monday to hold a small but fiery news conference on the steps of the Palmdale School District headquarters. Ali, a self-proclaimed activist, is trying to pressure school officials to expel a white student involved in a middle school fistfight Nov. 19 that led to a black student's death.

The 13-year-old boy who died after a fistfight at his middle school Friday has been identified as Steven Corson of Palmdale, authorities said Saturday. Corson and another eighth-grader got into a fight after class at Juniper Intermediate School. As a teacher's aide tried to break them up, Steven fell and hit his head on the sidewalk, school officials said. He went into cardiac arrest and was later pronounced dead at a hospital.

Shoulder to shoulder the boys in the Chatsworth Chiefs jerseys sat, wiping their eyes. The church seemed a strange place to be for members of the pee-wee football team. It was only a few weekends ago that their buddy Stephan Corson thundered down the field, a football squeezed between his hands. Now he lay in front of them in a cream-colored suit, white roses on his chest, impossibly silent. "He wanted to go pro," said teammate Desean Jackson, 13.

In the late 1960s, when the United Farm Workers union was spearheading a lettuce boycott aimed at pressuring growers to allow field hands to unionize, Frank DiNoto recalls his daughters' saying one day that their high school teachers had asked them to support the boycott. DiNoto was troubled by what he saw as the school's failure to give the farm owners' side of the dispute.

Shoulder to shoulder the boys in the Chatsworth Chiefs jerseys sat, wiping their eyes. The church seemed a strange place to be for members of the pee-wee football team. It was only a few weekends ago that their buddy Stephan Corson thundered down the field, a football squeezed between his hands. Now he lay in front of them in a cream-colored suit, white roses on his chest, impossibly silent. "He wanted to go pro," said teammate Desean Jackson, 13.

As police continue to investigate the fistfight at a Palmdale intermediate school that left a 13-year-old student dead, community members called Monday for the immediate expulsion of the surviving 14-year-old boy. Some residents also criticized school officials for dismissing race as a possible motive in the fight at Juniper Intermediate School. Stephan Corson, who is black, died Friday after the fight with another eighth-grade student, who is white.

The 13-year-old boy who died after a fistfight at his middle school Friday has been identified as Steven Corson of Palmdale, authorities said Saturday. Corson and another eighth-grader got into a fight after class at Juniper Intermediate School. As a teacher's aide tried to break them up, Steven fell and hit his head on the sidewalk, school officials said. He went into cardiac arrest and was later pronounced dead at a hospital.