Blackledge struggles against Police Violence in the wake of Police Murders of george floyd in minneapolis, Breonna Taylor in louisville, and the attempted murder of jacob blake in kenosha have once again sounded a call for black liberation while raising familiar questions about electoral politics and black freedom struggles. 50 years ago, his landmark election came on the heels of a 1967 rebellion in newark when the Police Beating of an unmarked black man struck an uprising against white supremacy. Amidst heightened organizing around racist urban renewal projects and educational injustice, the beating recalled countless Police Killings of black men in the city that had gone unpunished over the years and brought thousands into the july. At the july National Guard was called into uprisingto stop the which cost lives. In the following days, months, and years, the black and puerto rican communities leveraged the power and momentum of the uprising to build Community Power and organize successful campaigns or Community Control of urban development, educational justice, and political power in the city. Organized around the principle of cultural nationalism and began building educational, cultural, economic, and political organizations including the unit the united brothers. Armed same time, heavily white militias patrolled the citys predominantly italian north award and terrorized black communities signifying the violent white black backlash to lactamase for human rights and selfdetermination. Into this charts political fray came can gibson, a political moderate who had run unsuccessfully in the previous mayoral election, running paris cana slew of candidates for city council, bring the rights of stevie wonder, harry belafonte, james brown, and isaac hayes to lend their celebrity to the cause. Meanwhile, in the streets and neighborhoods, organizers registered and mobilized in unprecedented voter turnout that has yet to be matched. The trend is to plant the wet White Nationalism in the late 60s and early 70s, his campaign and election illustrate the excitement and aspiration of black local 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 has again recently become abundantly clear in cities like chicago and atlanta. So, what are the legacies for this era of struggle and what lessons do they hold for a new generation of activists and organizers who have been in the streets for over 100 days now demanding systemic change and black liberation . Here to discuss the legacies and lessons of these histories are beatrice adams, a phd candidate and in africanAmerican History at Rutgers University and a researcher of newark. Com. Williams esquire, a special city historian fort newark and author of unfinished agenda, urban politics in the era of black power. Lastly, the professor of history at Sarah Lawrence college, the author of a nation within the nation. The first question will be for professor williams. You are a leader in the struggle against the urban renewal project that would displace thousands of newarkers. Into an agreement which called for 60 acres of land and medical schools, 60 acres of vacant land for Community Development for housing and on that, housing has been built for thousands of years of Housing Units of housing. An opportunity for black people to get involved through unions. One half apprentices, one third journeymen, and other aspects which i do not have time to go into. That was the beginning of the coalition that morphed into the united brothers. Then it morphed into the committee for unified north which was the platform that brought gibson into electoral power. Peter thank you, professor williams. Professor woodard, you remember the late 1960s and early 1970s. Can you explain the objectives be had the Gibson Campaign and how this election fit within black political power struggles . You are on mute. Prof. Woodard can you hear me now . All right. After the assassinations of malcolm x, dr. King, and the black panther fred hampton, the grassroots organizers felt a great vacuum in the leadership. By the time dr. King came to newark in march, 1968, amiti baracka had met with malcolm x and they had told him about the alabama black party organizing and planted the seeds of an idea to make newark the northern counterpart for the black panther party. Newark was supposed to be the black panther experiment in the jim crow north. When dr. King met with amiri, 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 4, 1968, that black united front the june 1968o Political Convention in newark and the 1968 National Black power conference in philadelphia. At that point the National Black power conference made newark the test case for black power politics. All kinds of resources streamed into newark based on that agreement. From the Civil Rights Movement on the one hand, black Power Movement on the other hand, and the black cultural revolution that was going on in the popular art throughout the country. Accidentally, white vigilantes were attacking and mobbing africanamerican and Puerto Ricans in the streets of newark. In response, two poets, amiri baraka and felipe, signed a mutual defense pact insisting an attack on the Puerto Rican Community was an attack on the Africanamerican 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. That ended up being the 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. With the alliance of blacks and Puerto Ricans, and progressive whites, we won and the other piece is that the Campaign Apparatus for the newark fund did not disband when the election was over. After winning that election and learning how to use mass media and publications, they organized a congress of National African people in national and International Meetings in atlanta, georgia, then they organized the gary convention, the african liberation day in washington, d. C. And on and on. The group that put that together the Fund Community council. It met every sunday after church. That program was called face the , mimicking the tv program. Stand up they would the municipal officials and agreed to their paper, are you cleaning the streets, are you doing the Health Requirements and things like that, so it was an ongoing political movement, 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 usingconvention last week that same method. In a nutshell, that is what the strategy was. Thank you. Peter thank you, professor woodard. Professor adams, you spent a lot of time researching various aspects of the Gibson Administration and continuing struggles for black selfdetermination during these years. Could you talk about how the Gibson Administration measured up to the expectations the people had for him . Prof. Adams of course. Thank you for dr. Blackmere for asking me to serve on this panel and also thank you for allowing be a part of these walking grand resources about the wonderful history of newark. I will talk a little bit about my research for the project in the event that comes to mind is the 1974 puerto rican riot. Im going to call it a rebellion, like so many rebellions in American History, it is sparked by Police Violence. There is the annual cultural celebration happening in newark. The Puerto Rican Community is being over surveilled, there are police there, lots of police. A wreps. Erupts. A little girl is trampled by one of the horses. Of course, this sparks intense intense tensions between police and the Puerto Rican Community who had already been frustrated for years. Arrives on the scene, he tries to calm the tensions. There is also mark march downtown in city hall. The next week, there is a meeting with some of the leaders in the Puerto Rican Community and also spanishspeaking community in general. Eliminating is eliminating. Gibson does something in this meeting that is a little bit candid for a politician. It speaks to the limitations of black political power. They are asking questions about unemployment, asking questions about housing, and gibson says, i can only do so much as mayor. Sometimes i listen to people say oh, the president is helping on a plumber go down, he is helping on a plumber go up and i think how much direct power do power do they have he is in a way dismissing experiences saying, i cannot do anything, this is beyond my control, these issues you are bringing to me, im not interested in your pain as a community at this particular moment. Gibson isis speaks a little less maybe a lot less radical revolutionary than the movement that gets him into office. We already mention the black and Puerto Rican Convention that allows them to become mayor of that movement. We already mentioned the black and Puerto Rican Convention that kind of allows him to become mayor. That is the way he rises to office. Many of us think about it as a comparison between gibson and amiri baraka and how there is not a lot of love there. Baraka is in the meeting and gibson is not necessarily hearing the people. But he is elected four times. He is doing something and i think he is modeling something. He is trying to be the mayor for everyone, trying to serve the totality of the community that has had internal ruptures. That had had internal tensions. There is a nobleness to that, but also i think and i compare him i talk about jackson in atlanta and the American South and he seems to have a different stance. By no way was jackson necessarily a militant but he does have this black empowerment stance if we think about one of his greatest successes was the creation of black millionaires. I do not know if we can save a about gibson. He does create this black Political Class of people working in and around city hall, but he is much more trying to brand himself as a mayor for everyone. I think that really speaks to both the possibilities of black Political Leadership and the limitations of black Political Leadership. Peter thank you. You all were much more concise than i anticipated. We have a little bit extra time and that gives me a chance to. Sk an additional question the black and Puerto Rican Convention of 1969 was brought up several times. Im wondering if you would like to speak more about the atmosphere at the convention, with that convention represented in newarks Political Climate in 1969 and maybe some of what you are recalling about the platform of that convention and how that compared to what gibsons administration was actually about and actually prioritize. Prof. Williams i can 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 an even smaller amount of white people. All who had come together in this coalition which was actually run by two sets of people. One where the moderates headed by the official leader and the other by amiri baraka. At that time, it was difficult for the thin Campaign Manager i was his first but by arrangement we had someone involved with more campaigns than i had. It was a hell of a thing trying to answer to two separate leaderships, two sets of people and also two leadership styles. But the convention went on without a hitch. You mentioned some of the folks who had been there. We had dick gregory, all kinds of stars, political stars, and stars from the entertainment world. It was a success. We went out of their thinking this was going to be the script if you will for what black power would look like in the city of newark. There were committees that were formed out of the preliminary session at the end. One of the planks in that platform was that the state should take over the financing of the School District because newark did not have enough tax money, as were in the suburbs, to do that. That did not happen and gibson never talked about that, but a 1981 we had the abbot versus bert case where they were going have to pay for the schooling in the abbott district. Another thing that came up was, one, the question of a Police Review board. People were adamant about that because the police had been beating up and killing people then as they are now. Gibson never mentioned that during his campaigning and when he was elected i said in a meeting and i heard him say, i am the Police Review board. We did not anticipate that. Those are two big instances of what we wanted versus what we got. Specific goals and objectives that were measurable. Objectivesals and that were measurable. One of the things gibson said he was going to do is meet with capacitya leadership on a regular basis. We had one meeting and he said words to the effect, i am the mayor for all 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 run the city by himself. That was a forecast of what was i have to say one thing. There was a leadership vacuum in newark when baraka got together. There is no leadership vacuum. We had a fantastic done a fantastic job setting the stage. There is leadership. There is letter leadership in the education area with callahan fight, the medical school fight. There were people there who were in leadership positions and i do not want people to think that there was nothing going on until our brother came in with these ideas. Baraka was from newark. But the political wave that followed in his absence while he was away was as homegrown as what was done when he got there and have the insight and foresight to do what he did as you explained. Prof. Woodard i am sorry. I was trying to make it brief. There was a section in my talk about a few years before baraka came back, there is a Mass Movement. I was a part of that stew student movement. There were thousands of people who meeting regularly, usually protest meetings against ethnic cleansing which they called urban renewal. That is what united the community. Small groups had had important protests, but the ethnic cleansing formula woke everybody up and everybody from street hustlers to auto workers, to welfare mothers to auto work there is a Mass Movement that baraka came back into. He got anointed leader because he was beat up by the police on the first day of the rebellion, right . That is the whole thing. It was this strange convergence of all of these different thatrs of everything happened in july 1967 that merged the National Black power conference, which it already been planned, with the newark and detroit rebellions. Because of that fusion it created a new master narrative of black political power. I definitely did not want to leave that out. I think that Community Council was, in essence, the early grassroots leaders who would already been meeting. As a matter of fact, the Research Suggests those people were active in the 1950s with the National Negro labor council. I was always trying to find out when i went to the first meeting in the 1968 why everybody understood the rules of how a black Political Convention work if it was the only first one. It was only after doing my homework i found out the elders had been organizing since the 1950s. That is a long struggle and many leaders were involved. Prof. Williams let me say one more thing that. You left out a step. That coalition did include people from that age group, but those of us who were involved in the urban renewal struggle were young people mostly coming from the younger organization. Poor, my own group, that was the first big coalition, the first step that i was talking about. Baraka did not organize that. That came around the medical school fight and we got specific. We won specific things and the next step was the united brothers and baraka called together some of us who had been involved in the police struggles and took it to the next step. Peter thank you. I want to ask one last question before we open up to the q a. I want to raise one more name that we have not named who is george richardson. He was organizing for black political power in th