New to Java

I am new to java. I have created an simple Java stand alone applicaiton and iam getting this error at the Compile time.

ConfigLoader.java:22: <identifier> expected [javac] private static ArrayList<String> docClasses = null;


Here is an expert from the Code:

public class ConfigLoader {
	private static ArrayList<String> docClasses = null;  //Here is the error <String>
                private static String cutOffDate = null;
	private static boolean runDocIdGen = false;

Regards
Bart :)