The successful struggle to elect newarks first black mayor, kenneth gibson. Elected in june of 1970, gibsons administration marked a turning point for the black Freedom Movement in newark and was part of a National Wave a black political organizing that culminated in the election of black mayors in cities like cleveland, dairy, atlanta and detroit from 1967 to 1974. These histories feel particularly vital right now as black lives struggle against Police Violence in the wake of the murders of george floyd in minneapolis, jacob blake in kenosha, breonna taylor, as once again sounded the call for black liberation while raising familiar questions about electoral politics and black freedom struggles. 50 years ago, gibsons landmark election came on the heels of the 1967 rebellion in newark, when the Police Beating of an unarmed black man named john smith sparked a fiveday uprising against White Supremacy and its an forces in blue in the jim crow north. Amidst heightened organizing around racist urban renewal projects and educational injustice, smiths beating recalled countless Police Killings of black men in the city that had gone unpunished over the years and brought thousands into the streets that july. State police and National Guardsmen were called into the city to violently suppress the uprising, climbing two dozen lives in the process, including ten year old eddie moss and many others. In the following days, months and years, newarks black and puerto rican communities leveraged the people power and momentum of the uprising to build Community Power and organize successful campaigns for Community Control of urban development, educational justice and political power in the city. They organized around the principles of cultural nationalism and began building educational, cultural, economic, and Political Institutions and organizations, including the united brothers and community for a unified newark. At the same time, heavily armed white militias patrolled the citys predominantly italian north ward and terrorized black communities, signifying the violent white backlash that to black demands for human rights and Self Determination. Into this charged political fray came can gibson, and engineer and political moderate who had unsuccessfully run in the previous mayor election running alongside a slate of black and puerto rican candidates for city council. Gibsons campaign bringing the likes of fanny lou, hammer bringing the likes of fannie lou hamer, stevie wonder, harry belafonte, and isaac hayes to newark to lend their celebrity to the cause. In the streets and neighborhoods, organizers registered and mobilized an unprecedented voter turnout that has yet to be matched since. As part of a national trying to supplant White Nationalism in the late sixties and early seventies, gibsons election illustrated the aspirations of black political power in the urban north. At the same time, his administration quickly revealed the limitations of seeking black liberation through the ballot box. A revelation that is again that has again recently become abundantly clear in cities like chicago and atlanta. So, one of the legacies of this era of struggle . And with lessons that they hold for a new generation of activists and organizers, who had been on the streets for over 100 days, now demanding systemic change in black liberation . Here to discuss the legacies and essence of these histories are beaches at, mp she candidate, and a research for newer. Com. Junius w. Williams esquire, Officials Say historian for newark, an author of unfinished agenda, urban politics in the era of black power. And also produce to rise up newark. Com. And lastly, Komozi Woodard a professor and author of a nation within a nation. But power politics. So the first question will be for professor williams, you were a leader in the struggle against his project that would have displaced thousands of black newark workers in the late 1960s. Could you please describe how activists and organizers leverage to power in momentum generated by the 1967 rebellion, to organize for political power in new york . Youre on mute. Thank you, peter, and thank you for the work you have done with rise up newark and other things. The medical school fight was an example of a strategy which combined all aspects of political rebellion. The demonstration had already taken place, the demonstration was the rebellion. So there was no need to go back in the streets. We had been in the streets. People had been in the streets, more people had been in the streets than any other time. In newarks history. So i was working with phil hodgkins, who later became chairman of national snicc. I was working with snicc at that time, and i had also been working with and sds project. And i said, i suppose we do Something Different . After the rebellion people were scared. The white people were scared. Suppose we do Something Different . So i was in law school at yale, had taken classes at the architecture and planning, and i said to my friend professor girders, can you design a plan that shows how we can take the plan they have for the medical school . They wanted 150 acres, and you could get it much smaller. And so he did that. And in a long story, assured that came up with a plan for 19 acres. Then, i got the lawyers from the Legal Defense find, who had up until that time had been working mainly in the south. They came in and filed a complaint and said you cant build this Hospital Medical school, because there is not enough housing. So with that in mind, there was a new coalition. And that coalition levied the power of that nameless and faceless mother with a break into a plan. Into an agreement which called for 60 acres of lead, for the hospital and medical school, 60 acres a vacant land for Community Development and housing. And that housing had been built with over 1000 units. And opportunity for black people to get involved in the construction, through the unions, one have gentleman, one half apprentices, one third journeyman, and various others aspect, which i dont have time to go into. But that was the beginning of the coalition morphed into the unified, into the united brothers, which was called by baraka. It was more into the platform which brought gibson into electoral power. Thank you, professor williams. Professor woodward, you remember this committee in congress for African People in the late sixties in early seventies, could you please explain the political analyses and objectives behind the gibson campaign, and how this election fit within national stragglers for black political power, in the 1970s . Youre on mute. Can you hear me now . All right. I after the assassination of malcolm x, dr. King, and another black panther, fred hampton, the organizers in new york saw a great vacuum in leadership. By the time dr. King came to newark, in march 1968, amiti baracka at mid with malcolm x and they had told him about the alabama black Panther Party organizing. And planted the seeds of an idea to make newark their northern counterparts for the atlanta county black party. So newark was supposed to be the black power experiment in the jim crow north. The way glanced county was that in the jim crow south. Thats when dr. King came, and met with amiti baracka in newark, he proposed a black united front, between the civil rights revolution and black power politics. King was assassinated less than two weeks after that meeting. When he was assassinated april 4th, 1968, that black united front was packed into the june 1968 black Political Convention in new york. In the 1968 National Black power conference in philadelphia. At that point the National Back to our conference make newark the test case for black or politics. So all kinds of resources streamed into new york, based on that agreement. From the Civil Rights Movement on the one hand, the black Power Movement on the other hand, in the black cultural revolution that was going on in the popular arts, throughout the country. Accidentally, white vigilantes were attacking in mobbing African American and Puerto Ricans in the streets of newark. And in response, to poets, amiti baracka of the united brothers, and felipe luciano, signed a mutual defense pact. Insisting that an attack on the Puerto Rican Community was an attack on the black community, and vice versa. That mutual appreciation and trust, grew into a Political Alliance that was articulated at the 1968 black and puerto rican Political Convention. And that in that up being basically their winning formula. 1968, the united brothers ran an allblack ticket at an allblack convention, we lost. 1969, we started early organizing for the 1970 election, and with that alliance of blacks and Puerto Ricans, and progressive whites, we won. And the other piece of it, is that the Campaign Apparatus for the newark fund did not disband when the election was over. So after winning that election, and learning how to use mass media and publications, they organized a Congress African people of international meeting, in atlanta, georgia. And then they organize the gary convention, the african liberation stay in washington, d. C. And on, and on. So the group that put that together was called the c Fun Community council. They met every sunday after church, and remember its after church. In their program was called face the nation. Making the tv program. And basically they would stand up the municipal officials and great their paper. Are you cleaning the streets . Are you doing the health requirements, and things like that. So i was an ongoing political movement. But that convention, some of us were students. We studied the black conventions in the 19th century. And we thought that would be a workable formula, for the 20th century. And i think young people now just a convention, i think it was last week, using that same method. In a nutshell thats what the strategy was. Thank you. Thank you, professor woodward. Professor adams, you spent a lot of time researching various aspects of the Gibson Administration, and continuing struggles for black Self Determination during those years. Could you please talk about how the Gibson Administration measured up to the expectations that people had for him . Of course. I want to say first, i thank you so much to dr. Black near for asking me to serve on this planet. And also for allowing me to kind of be an all over this kind of walk in primary sources, about this one in history of newark. So i will talk a little bit about my research for the project. And the advent that comes from adams, who has been this question, is the 1974 puerto rican right. It im gonna call it a rebellion. And like so many rebellions in American History, it was sparked by Police Violence. There is an annual cultural celebration happening in new york. The Puerto Rican Community had police, their mounted police, intention erupts over a dice game, dominos game. A debated historical fact. But what is definitely happening, is a little girls trampled by one of the horses. Of course, this sparks intense tensions between the police and the Puerto Rican Community, who had already been frustrated for years. Gibson arrives on the scene, he tries to calm the tensions. Theres actually a march, in which gibson participates, that day downtown to city hall. The next day, gibson is in a meeting with some of the leaders of the Puerto Rican Community and also more broadly the Spanish Speaking community and more general. I think this is illuminating. Because gibson does something in this meeting that is both a little bit candid for a politician to do. But it speaks to maybe some of the limitations of black political power. Theyre asking questions about unemployment, asking questions about housing, and gibson says, i can only do so much as a mayor. And sometimes, i listen to people say, oh, the president is helping unemployment go down, or the president is helping unemployment go up. And i think, how much direct power do political actors have over all of these things that we give them. So we have to be honest in a way, but also hes in a way dismissing their experiences. Saying that i cant do anything, this is beyond my control. Some of these issues that youre bringing to, me im not interested in your pain. As a community, in this particular moment. And i think this speaks gibson is a little less, maybe a lot less radical revolutionary bend the movement that gets him into office. Weve already mentioned the black and Puerto Rican Convention. That kind of allows him to become mayor. That movement is the way he rises to the office. And many of us think about it as a comparison between gibson and amiti baracka, how there is not a lot of love their. For a long time. Its the same that is happening in, meaning actually, he is there, too and the tensions are there. Hes hearing the people, they constituency that got him elected. But hes elected four times, so hes doing something. And i think he is modeling something that becomes important. Hes trying to be the mayor for everyone. Hes trying to serve the totality of the community that has had internal ruptures. That has had internal tensions. And there is no bonus to that. But also, i think, and i compare him in a way to my own work. I talk about jackson in the american south, and he seems to have a different stance. By no means is jackson a salient militant, but he does have this kind of black empowerment stink stance. We think about one of the greatest excesses was the black milliners. The city contract between the 1 and black African Americans. I dont know if we could say the same about gibson. He does create this black Political Class of people working in and around city hall. But hes much more trying to brand himself as a mayor for everyone. I think that what i think that really speaks to are both the possibilities of black political leadership, but also the limitations a black political either ship. Leadership. Thank you. You are all much more concise than we anticipated. That gives us a little extra time. That gives me a chance to ask an additional question. The black and Puerto Rican Convention of 1969 was brought up several times. Im wondering if any of you all would like to speak a little more about the atmosphere in the convention. Whats that convention represented and newarks Political Climate in 1969. Maybe some of what you are recalling about the platform of that convention and how that compared to what the Gibson Administration was actually about and prioritized. I could talk about that. The convention was supercharged with hope. Most of us were young. Most of us were black, but we also had Puerto Ricans and even smaller amounts white people. They ahead all come together in this coalition, which was actually run by two sets of people. One where the moderates. At that time, it was difficult for the den campaign manager, i was his First Campaign manager, but by arrangement we got someone who had been involved in more campaigns than i had. It was a heck of a thing trying to answer to separate leadership sets of people and also leadership styles. The convention went on without a hitch. You mentioned some of the folks who had been there. We had degree, we had all kinds of quote unquote political stars as well as starts for the entertainment world. It was a success. This is going to be the script if you will for one black power would look like in the city of newark. Among other things, there were committees. One of the planks in that platform was that the state should take over the financing of the school district. Because newark didnt have enough tax money to do that. Gibson never talked about that. In 1981, we had the habit versus bookcase, where they were going to have to pay for the schooling of the people in the socalled abbott districts because they didnt have enough tax revenue. It was prescient in that sense. Another thing that came up was the question of a Police Review board. People were adamant about that because the police had been leading up in killing people then as they are now. Gibson never mentioned that during his campaigning, and when he was elected, i sat in a meeting and heard him say, i am the Police Review board. We dont anticipate that. Those are two big instances of what we wanted braces what we got. They operate specific goals and objectives that were measurable. Specific goals and objectives that were measurable. One of the things gibson said that he was going to do was that those in leadership capacity would meet with us on a regular basis basis. He had one meeting and said works to the effect of i am the mayor for all of the people and we are not going to do that. I remember baraka the elder saying to me afterwards, we elected him to be the mayor, but nobody thought he was going to try to run the city by himself. That was a forecast of what was about to come. I have to say one thing, because i disagree with what you said that there was a leadership vacuum in newark when baraka got together with all these national people. No, there was no leadership vacuum. We had done a fantastic job setting the stage for the next step of the leadership for the united brothers. There was leadership in the education era with the callaghan fight, with the medical school fight. There were people in leadership positions and i didnt want people to think there was nothing going on until our brother came in with these ideas. Baraka was from newark. He had people knew him, but the political wave that followed in his absence while he was away was just as homegrown as what was done when he got there and he had the inside and foresight to do what he did as you explained. Im sorry. Im trying to make it brief. By doing that i left out a section where i talk about a few years before baraka came back, there was a Mass Movement. I was part of that student movement, but there were thousands of people meeting regularly, usually in protest meetings, against ethnic cleansing, which they called urban renewal or black people removal. That is what united the Community Difference small groups had different protests, but the ethnic cleansing formula woke everybody up. And everything from street had letters to autoworkers to welfare mothers to tenant groups, there was a Mass Movement that brock came back into. Strangely, he got a nod to the leader because he got beat up by the police on the first day of the rebellion. So thats the whole thing. It was a strange convergence of all of these different factors that happened in july of 1967. It merged the National Black conference, which had already been planned, with the newark and detroit where billions. And because of that fusion, it created a new master narrative of black political power. So i definitely did not want to leave that out. I think that Community Council was, in essence, those earlier grassroots leaders who had already been meeting for several years, as a matter of fact, the Research Suggests that those people who are active in the 1950s with the national integral labour council. I was always trying to figure out when i went to the first meeting in 68 how everyone understood the rules of a black political figure work if it was only the first convention. It was only after doing my homework that i found out the eldest have been organized since the fifties. So its a long struggle and many leaders were involved in it. Let me say one more thing on that. You left out a step. Yes, that coalition did include people from that age group, but those of us who were involved in that urban renewal struggle were young people mostly. We were coming from the younger organizations. For, the newark Planning Areas association. That was the first big coalition. Baraka did not organize that. As we explained, we want some specific things. The next step was the united brothers. Baraka called together some of us who have been involved in that urban renewal struggle. We then took it to the next step. Thank you all. I want to ask one last question before we open it up to questions and answers. I just want to raise up one more name into the room that we havent named, thats george richardson, who was organizing for black political power in the city during the mid 1960s, looking at the putting together an Interracial Committee to organize to build political power. I just want to make sure that we dont leave out of the progression as well. Just to transition and kept the saw, i want to ask the three of you either from your participation or study of this era, what kind of lessons do you draw from this area that huge would share with younger organizers and activist about engaging electoral politics and black liberation. Look, when we said black power naively, we did not realize that each class understood black power to be a different thing. When people like gibson was elected, he thought like power had been achieved. Okay. The people in the Tenant Movement who are suffering in Public Housing and going on a rant strike understood that black power has not been achieved. One of the things in terms of having these conventions and political movements is each sector of the kim Community Needs to articulate what they mean by freedom now or black power. I remember meeting with a black businessman from Atlanta Georgia who said he worked with dr. King. I said what did you do . He said my father in short dr. Kings cars. I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. The point is each class was saying the same words, but they mean different things. We have to be clear from the beginning, if youre going to risk your life and raise money and do all those things to elect those people, that is understood, one of those concerns . What is that agenda . I would say with respect to the election aspect, i heard a young minister on some National Radio program and he was asked whether he was going to vote on that. I guess he was in his thirties. He said he had decided if the whether he was going to vote because people have been betrayed with elections in the past. Therefore, he was going to keep organizing and the street. I just wanted to say to him how foolish that sounds. Because you can do both. You have to do both. Theres no point sitting around and leading the big house go to somebody who is definitely going to keep them from organizing. Whos going to keep beating you down. Whos going to keep you down if they can, as opposed to using the street demonstrations as a punctuation mark to underline the faith that people had put into those folks that we put into office. If for no other reason and to think that well, our political objective is to half power. In this case, nowadays, not just black power, but the way that black lives matter defines it. We want to have power for that coalition of people. But you also want to get rid of somebody who was against you. Thats just as relevant to what youre trying to do. If nothing else, organizing for elections as part of a reason for your being. You want to achieve a political objective. You want to do this one last thing to get the Playing Field a little more even. Thats one of the things we talk about. We had a program which was about to celebrate with the community did to elect ken gibson. All of you were apart in one way or another as we all involved with the website rise at newark. I want people to take a look at that because weve had over 1 million hits. I stopped counting after that. Rise up newark. Com. In that particular two hour session that we had, which started out as we had here, but also went over to some of the other mass media events that we control. We ended up with 18,000 people looking at what we call protest power. Where we celebrated with the ability of the people to change from street organization, those small unpredictable street organizations, to become into coalitions and bigger organizations. And then to mark even further into election organizations, to put gibson into power. Now, what we were not able to do is soup stain that movement afterwards, the hold gibson accountable. I dont think anybody has learned a key politicians accountable, when you talking about organizations from the left. Nobody has done that. But the right, they control him with money. With, us nobody learn how to do that. But you dont stop doing it, you learn how to do that. The first thing you gotta do is to make three then feel a little more even so we have to participate in the election. Can i slide in a real quick . I just want to say one thing. About black women in this movement, this historical moment were talking about, as well. My vehicle into the century, was actually student rebellion that happened that record newark. I was researching for another conference, but another public history project. And it was vicky, she was part of this conference as well, shes a strong powerful Freedom Fighter in the history that i was telling about race and records. And one side kind of saw her, you can see this black united front, including women of welfare fighting for welfare reform. When we talk about the tenants fighting the rent strikes. So many women are on the forefront of that fight. Even when it came to our urban renewal, a black woman calls up and says, did the mayor tell you hes trying to take your homes, and our houses . So i just have to get that little psa. Women are here along fighting alongside everybody else. And the community its organizing the institutions, and the economic development. That Initiative Came from the grassroots, and not from the top. So although i was that the groundbreaking of Frederick Douglass housing, with reverend jones. We saw gibson cut the ribbon for the Housing Project and get the credit for it. And reverend jones looked at me and said thats the way it goes, we do the work and, the mayor comes in and take the credit. But we cant have amnesia about who is doing the work, otherwise to work will not get done. So its very important to understand that all of those community institutions, the african free, schools in newark school, the chad school, the black youth organizations, there were hundreds of organizations. Thats the meat and bulk of potatoes for what happened in newark. And when we came with 1 Million Dollar proposal to gibson, he said potential would be interested in that. , we didnt know prudential was in the room. We tried to tell these ottawa benin factories, feeling the break when they turned out into or restoration corporation. So we went over there instead he died, and try to bring it to newark, and he vetoed that. And with the police saying, lets remember disruption continue to be important, because when white vigilantes mocked the construction workers, the community stormed into city councilman, by thousands, to demanded police director. Lets remember, we had a white jury Police Directorate under gibson who resigned, when it came to arrest the black people, i mean white people, im sorry, who had beaten up the black construction workers. So all of these over and over against the Mass Movement. And the power of disruption to say, youre not gonna had this meeting, unless these thousand voices are heard. That, over and over, its what made progress in newark. Up next on American History tv, university of minnesota professor, saje mathieu, discusses how world war i affected African Americans. She says the promise of a better life, because of military service in the water, was largely denied by the reality of jim crow america. The National World war one museum, and we more 11 city missouri, hosted this top, it lasts about an hour
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