Black political organizing that culminated in the election of course black mayors like cleveland, atlanta and detroit from 1967 to 1974. They feel particularly vital right now as blackled struggles in the wake of Police Murders of george floyd in minneapolis, Breonna Taylor in louisville, and kenosha have sounded the call for black liberation while raising questions about the role of electoral politics and black freedom struggles. 50 years ago gibsons landmark election came on the heels was 1967 rebellion in newark when the Police Beating of an unarmed black man, john smith, had whit supremacy and its enforcers in blue in the jim crow north. Amid heightened racist renewal projects and educational injustice, it recalled countless Police Killings that had gone unpublished into the years and brought thousands into the streets that july. State police and National Guardsmen were brought into the city to violently suppress the uprising, claiming two dozen lives in the process including ed edd eddie moss among others. They had the moment are people power and momentum of the uprising to build Community Power and organized successful campaigns for Community Control of urban development, educational justice and political power in the city. Baraka organized around the principles of cultural nationalism and began with economic, and Political Institutions and organizations including the united brothers and community for unified newark received fund. At the same time, they pat rold the predominantly italian northward and terrorized black communities signifying the white backlash to black demands for human rights and selfdetermination. Into this charged political fray came ken gibson, an engineer and political moderate who had run unsuccessfully in the previous mayoral election. Running alongside of a slate of black and puerto rican candidates in city council, he became a National Cause celeb to bring the likes of fannie lou haimer, stevie wonder, marry belafonte and isaac hayes to lend their celebrity to the cause. Meanwhile, in the streets and neighborhoods, grassroots organizer registered and mobilized a voter tunout thats yet to be matched since. To subplant the racism of white liberal mayors and black progressives in the early 60s and 70s, the aspirations of black political power in the urban north. At the same time, they had the limitations and the revelation thats become abundantly clear in cities like chicago and atlanta . So are this for the areas of struggle and what does it hold for a new generation of activists and organizers who have been in the streets for over 100 days demanding systemic change and liberation. Here to discuss the legacies and lessons of these history are beatrice adam, a ph. D candidate in africanAmerican History in Rutgers University in new brunswick. Julius williams esquire, official city historian for newark and author of unfinished agenda, urban politics of black power. And lastly, kimozi water, a professor of history at st. Lawence college and author of a nation within a nation le roy baraka and black power politics. The first would be for professor williams. Youre an urban in the struggle that would have built the state Medical College in the late 1960s. Can you generated by the 1967 rebellion to organize for political power in newark . Youre on mute. Thank you, peter, and thank you for the work you have done in newark 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. Weve been in the streets. People had been in the streets. More people were in the streets than at any other time in newarks history. So i was working with Phil Hutchins who later became the chairman of national, and the local chapter and i was working with snick at that time and i was working with the project called the local union project, and i said, well, suppose we do Something Different . Because after the rebellion people were scared and the white people were scared. Suppose we do Something Different . So i was in law school and yale and had taken classes at the architecture and planning and i said to my friend pat grodus, can you design a plan that shows how you can take the plan they had at the medical school which they won 150 acres and you can get it much smaller and so he did that and to make a long story short, they came up with a plan for 18 acres. Then i got the lawyers from the Legal Defense fund, which up to that point they were, woing mainly in the south and they came in and filed a complaint and said you cant build us, a hospital or medical group, so with with me, that is a new kohlition levied the power of that nameless and faceless brother about a brick, into a a plan and an agreement which is 60 acres of land and 60 acres of land for housing and that had been built almost a thousand units of housing with low and moderate income, and an opportunity for black people to get involved in the construction through the unions, onehalf gentlemen, onethird one half apprentices and onethird journeymen and various other aspects which i dont have time to go into, but to end, that was the beginning of the coalition that morphed into the united brothers which was called together in mary baraka and was in turn morphed to the committee for unified north which was the platform that brought gibson into the electoral power. Thank you, professor wi williams, you worked in the 1960s can you, plain the with the gibb sob campaign and how it fit with black political power in the 1970s . S campaign and howt with black political power in the 1970s . O campaign and how it fit with black political power in the 1970s . N campaign and how fit with black political power in the 1970s . Youre on mute. Yes. After the assassinations of malcolm x, dr. King and the black panther fred hampton, graduates and organizers felt a great vacuum and leadership. By the time that dr. King came to newark in 1968, baraka had met with malcolm x and stoky carmichael and brown or snick in particular and they told him about the alabama black Panther Party organizing and planted the seeds of an idea to make newark the northern counterpart for the county black Panther Party. So newark was supposedly the black power experiment in the jim crow north the way lounge county black panthers with the jim crow south. When dr. King came and met with newark and he proposed a black united front between the civil rights revolution and black power politics and king was assassinated less than two weeks after that meeting when he was assassinated april 4, 1968, that black united front was packed into the june 1968 black Political Convention in newark and the 1968 National Black power conference in philadelphia. At that point, the National Black power conferences made newark the test case for black power politics. So all kinds of resources streamed into newark based on that agreement, from the Civil Rights Movement on the one hand, the black Power Movement on the other hand and the black cultural revolution that was going on throughout the country. Accidentally, white vigilantes were attacking and mobbing africanamerican and Puerto Ricans in the streets of newark, and in response, two poet, baraka of the spirit house movers and the united brothers and Felipe Luciano of the poets and the young lords signed the mutual defense pack insisting that an attack on the Puerto Rican Community was an attack on the black community and vice versa. That mutual a praesh yagz and trust grew into a Political Alliance that was articulated at the 1968 black and puerto rican Political Convention, and that ended up being basically the winning formula and 1968 and 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 that the Campaign Apparatus for the gibson and the newark fund didnt disband when the election was over and after winning that election and learning how to use mass media and publications, and organize the International Meeting in Atlanta Georgia and then they organized the gary convention, the african liberation in washington, d. C. And on and on. So the group that put that together was called the c Fund Community council, and met every sunday after church, right . And their program was called face the nation mimicking the tv program, and basically, they would stand up the municipal officials and grade their paper and are you cleaning the streets and are you doing the Health Requirements like that, and it was an ongoing Political Movement and that convention, some of us were students and 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 are just had a convention, i think it was last week, using and in a nutshell, thats what the strategy was. Thank you. Thank you, professor. Professor adams, you spent a lot of time researching various aspects of the Gibson Administration and continuing struggles for Self Determination during various years, can you talk about how the Gibson Administration measured up to the expectations that people have for him . Of course. I want to say thank you so much for doctor blackwell for asking me to serve on this panel and also thank you for allowing me to kind of be in all of these walking primary sources about this wonderful history of newark. So ill talk a little bit about my research for the project and the event that comes from asking this question is the 1974 puerto rican riot, and ill call it a rebellion and like so many rebellions in American History, it is sparked by a police violence, right . Theres the annual, cultural celebration happening in newark. The Puerto Rican Community is being overt. There are police there, mounted police and tension erupts over a dice game, a dominos game, and it is a debated historical fact, but what definitely happened is a little girl was trampled by one of the horses and 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, right . He tries to calm the tensions and theres actually a march and gibson participates in downtown and city hall. The next day, gibson is in the meeting with the Puerto Rican Community and also more broadly the spanishspeaking community in general and i think this is illuminating, right . And it is both a little bit candid for a politician to do and speaks to maybe some of the limitations of black political power, right . So, theyre asking questions about unemployment and theyre asking questions about housing and gibson says i can only do so much as a mayor, and sometimes i listen to people say e oh the president is uponing had unemployment go down. The president is helping unemployment go up and how much direct power do political actors have over all these things . Gibson is being honest in a way, and also, hes, in a way, dismissing the experiences, right . Saying that i cant do anything. This is beyond my control and some of the issues that youre bringing to me. Im not interested in paying as a community in this particular moment, and i think this speaks to, you know, gibson, is a little less, a lot less radical revolutionary in the movement that gets to office regarding the black and Puerto Rican Convention that kind of allows him to then become mayor, and that movement is the way you rise, right . To the office, and many of us think about it as a comparison between gibson and amir barack and how theres not a lot of love there. For a long time, right . Its the same. Baraka is in this meeting as well, too and these same tensions are not necessarily hearing the people or the constituency that got him elected, but hes elected four times, right . He served as mayor for 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 a community that has had internal ruptures and has had internal tensions and there is some nobleness to that, right . But also, i think and i skom pair him in a way to my own work and i talked about jackson to the American South and he seems to have a different stance, right . By no means is jackson necessarily a militant, but he does have this kind of black empowerment stance if we think about one of his greatest successes is the cree asian of black millionaires. Did the contract goes from 1 to 27 of africanamerican, right . I dont know if we can say the same about gibson, right . He does create this kind of black Political Class of people who are working in and around city hall, but hes much more trying to brand himself as a mayor for everyone, and i think the way that really speaks to both the points, right, of black Political Leadership and also the limitations of black Political Leadership. Thank you. You all were much more concise than i anticipated so we have a little bit extra time so that gives me a chance to ask an additional question. The black and Puerto Rican Convention in 1969 was brought up several times and im wondering if any of you all would like to speak more about the atmosphere at the convention and what that convention represented in newarks Political Climate in 1969 and maybe some of the some of what youre recalling about the platform of that convention and how that compared to what gibsons administration was actually about and actually prioritized. Yeah. I can talk about that. The convention was super charged with hope. Most of us were young. Most of us were black, and we also had Puerto Ricans and then we had an even smaller amount of white people. All who would come together in this coalition which was actually ruined by two sets of people and one were the moderates headed by bob kerr and the official leader and the other by mary baraka, so at that time it was difficult for the then Campaign Manager and that was his first Campaign Manager by arrangement, and we got someone who had been involved with that campaign and certainly who came in and that was a hell of a thing, dan said and trying to answer to two separate leadership people, sets of people and also leadership style, but the convention went on without a hitch. You mentioned some of the folks who had been there, and i think thats a variable. Or maybe you didnt. We had dick gregory and all kinds of stars that are quote, unquote political stars as well as stars from the entertainment world, and it was a success. We went out of there thinking this was going to be a script, if you will, for what black power would look like in the city of newark. Among other things, there were committees that pointed it out at the end and one of the one of the planks in that platform was that the state should take over the financing of the School District because they didnt have enough tax money in the suburbs to do that. Now that didnt happen and gibson never talked about that, but in 1981 you had the abbott versus byrd case who said just that. The state will have it pay for the schooling of the people in the socalled abbott district because they dont have enough tax, so it was impressive in that sense. Another thing that came up, one was one was 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 sat in a meeting and i heard him say im the Police Review board. Well, we didnt anticipate that. So that was those were two big instances of what we wanted versus what we got and they offered specific goals and objectives that were measurable. Specific goals and objectives that were measurable, and one of the things gibson was going to do is to meet with leadership capacity on a regular basis, we had one meeting and it was in effect, and were not going to do that. I remember baraka was saying to me, we elected her to be the mayor and did nobody think he would run city hall all by himself, but that was a forecast of what it was. I have to sigh one thing, ill disagree with what you said was that there was a leadership vacuum. No, was there no leadership vacuum in newark. We had done a fantastic job, setting the stage for the next step of the leadership was the united brothers. There was leadership and there was leadership in the area with the callahan fig