Transcripts For CSPAN3 1967 Newark Rebellion 20170826 : vima

At Rutgers University in newark. And mark, whose breath of work in Higher Education and the humanities in new york include serving as the director of the alexander Price Institute on at the city, culture and modern experience. The author of a recent book on new work and the rebellion of 1967. Please join me in welcoming michael fletcher, junius williams, and Linda Caldwell apps to the stage. [applause] i should interject that at the end of the Panel Discussion there will be a few moments for questions and answers. Members of the panel will take those questions and we will conclude this panel and move on to our next presentation. Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. What i hope to do here is just have a conversation and talk about what newark was like before 1967, and how it came to be that way. Also, talk about what has transpired since. Like political empowerment, what has resulted from those developments. I thought i would start with talk a little bit to us about the black population in newark. How did it get to be a magnet for the great black migration and what kinds of jobs were people coming to get, what conditions that they find when they arrived there . First of all, new jersey is the northern most southern state. [laughter] you laugh because it is ironic, but as such, who was one of the first places that you would reach coming from the south. It was important on the underground railroad. It had a reputation as being the crossroads. More important, during the great migration, actually, a little before that, starting at 1890, the Manufacturing Industry Work Locations between philadelphia and new york. It had wonderful seaport. It attracted many to come to seek their fortune in new york. North port at the time was probably the largest in the northeast. There were jobs. Factories during world war i were humming and buzzing. The immigrant population that had worked in those factories were off to war. Our men from the south came up to work in most factories. I will stop there because i could go on. [laughter] newark had always had an africanamerican population, both free and people who were in bondage. Michael as you get closer to 1967, talk about newark. Newark is one of the famous one of the famous north the that is famously black. Talk to us about leading up to that. Thank you for having us here on this. I look out and see a lot of faces from newark, d. C. , and we had a conversation about this. He was quite a man. The question. Let me just get directly to the answer to this. Did we have representation . No. There were two City Council Persons at best time at this time. One was irvine, who was the first black elected officials elect it in 1954 as a city councilman. First, that was quite something because, power concedes nothing without a demand. He had the stuff to back it up. That is the kind of election it was, as are all the elections. He and the other city councilman, who were in leg did elected as a councilman, they were of salt by the traditional power structure, which at that time was run by an italian mayor. He was interested in becoming the first italian governor in the state of new jersey. All of the issues that were waiting down upon black people, poverty, break that down, you have schools, you had teachers that did not want to teach this particular group. You had a welfare workers that did not want to give the check to the people even though they were deserving of it. You have landlords who would charge high rent for shacks. In newark you had people who had to live in cold water flats. This is just like it was in the south. On top of that, you had the police who were controlling the plantations. 90 of the police force was white. Mostly irish and italian in a city that was 58 black. Nobody cared what they did, least of all the mayor and those who are in power. There was another group of people who were coming in, part of the civil rights movement, it had not yet become black power, but it was going towards that. We were raising peoples expectations. This is not normal, this is not what you are entitled to. People who were already there, people who came in later. You had that conflict between blacks who are inside the government, and black people who are outside the government. You had whites in power who were fronted i blacks, and you had blacks who were supported by whites. Michael back in 1964, lyndon famously launched the great society. Why did that not do more to improve conditions . I would say, first, it did do some Amazing Things in newark. It did not solve all of the problems, but i can get back to that. The reason why it did not do all that people had hopes, all that maybe it could have is that it was resisted from the get go. Often times we hear the story that the war on poverty was called off because money for the vietnam war was being drained away from Domestic Social programs, but even before we sent the first Ground Troops to vietnam in 1965, the Newark City Council had decided not to provide their portion of the funding for the local war on poverty. They recognized it for what it ended up being, sort of a fostering ground for political dissent for political alternative. And for a think a lot of black workers who had, since 1959, were aware that their city would be the first majority black city in the northeast. This saw the war on poverty and solve the social programs is a real opportunity. They were constructed to be independent of city hall. There was this knowledge that, and k, we are, if not already, on the verge of this city. The powers that we are disenfranchising them on multiple fields. Here this Program Comes down from the federal government and they see real opportunity. It is used for community organizing. If i can Say Something about the point youre trying to make. I remember weeding reading some quotes from the mayor and sheriff saying they were taken completely by surprise. This should not have been a surprise at all. There were signs 50 and 60 years before 1967 that the city was not planning correctly for its citizens. The zoning laws were out of whack. I remember reading a report that said, we have to plan for the large influx of people that we know are coming to the city. But they did not. The master plan of 1947 had all these grandiose ideas of what they could do and 20 years later in 1967, they had still not done anything. When they talk about that house conditions, poor health conditions, drain on the educational system, these were all predictable. Also predictable but they refuse to do anything about it. Michael i was reading in your memoir about the harrowing tale of you driving into the riot. I know we have kind of telegraph the answer here, but what caused the riot of 1967 . Let me start with the second one first. What caused the rebellion was all of the rebellion in that right. Ok, you gave me a whole lot to talk about, now. [laughter] we have time . What caused the rebellion was all of the above. It got to a point where people to said, we cannot take this anymore. Anytime you have somebodys foot up your behind, and you moved to take their foot out, that is a rebellion, that is not a riot. A ride is kids who go down to Fort Lauderdale on spring break and did not get stopped by the police. A riot is when you have folks after a soccer game, Football Game in england or in germany, and the wrong team wins, that is a riot. That is uncontrolled, unbible did just passion. People were looking for solutions. When all of the institutions that are supposed to resolve these things when you bring it to the table nonviolently, people were organized. Dont think user people all over the place doing nothing. A lot of organization was nonviolent. People were saying, what is going on. It was predictable and happening in front of their faces. Number two, that cause the riot and that is why there was a rebellion, in your terms. In my terms, a riot in what you said. In my particular case, i was a thirdyear law student in newark. This is my third summer. I was in charge of a group of law student sisters for the Legal Services project, but i was also working with a group called the Newark Community union project, which is part of the ses for the democratic society. I was also working with the student nonviolent coordinating committee. If yall dont know those, look them up, young people especially. I was also in charge of this program. I was writing up court street m a car, and had a couple of guys with me and we were just looking around. We were out after curfew. Yes, we were out beyond the point that we were supposed to be out. So, as i describe in my book, we had just turned into court street, going up the hill to what is Martin Luther king boulevard now. I heard the sirens, then i looked in the Rearview Mirror and i realized we were in deep, deep trouble. The angle in front of me told me to get out the car, which we did. They searched the car and some no contraband, but there was something in there that told me they wanted to kill us. Michael were they pointing guns at you . Yes. One had a shotgun and the others had pistols. The sergeant was telling them they are law students. There are law students let them go, he said it three times. The shotgun man had his eye straight on me at that point. The other man was making all kinds of omnidirectional orders for us, hoping we would run. They finally listen to him, got back in the car and trove off into the night. If it had not been for that sergeant, i dont the guy would have been here today. Michael mark, in the wake of not only the newark rebellion, but rebellions of many cities in this countrys and the terrible scene we saw in detroit that then, Linda Johnson reported a commission. The one thing we remember from that report is that famous quote, that our society is moving towards becoming to societies. One black and one white. In the book i know you sell my q did not like that phrase, and did not like the i think you might have quoted a performance. Explain why. What did you sick of that comment and was it precedent . Mark i do call it a performance, but not at all in a dismissive way. One of the way commissions like that work, aside from the content of the report, aside from the recommendations and their findings is that they attempt to show people, in the midst of a crisis, the way to work through that crisis. It is intellectually, honestly, weighing evidence. I think those commissions model that. They perform that for the nation. I think that is an important function. That line that comes in the summary of the report in the very beginning. The summary was written by a couple of staff members, and the vice chair of that commission. If you have ever seen the report, you have this 6, 7, 800 page chockfull of charts, numbers and footnotes and recommendations. Some of which seem to contradict each other. It is a huge massive report. They were worried it seemed to scientific. They wrote what becomes is incredibly famous line in american rhetoric as a way to give some urgency to the rest of their report. Michael was it an accurate prediction do you think . Mark the prediction questions. For sure. We know, we have scholars who have studied segregation rates nationwide in the decades after the 1960s. We know about the rise of residential segregation. Especially concentrated in cities. I think, predominately, although i think people talk about some of these positive things that come out of 1967, there is certainly a bifurcation of how people understand that. This is partly a language riot rebellion. It becomes a way americans can blame black people for the decline of cities. Cities declined because black people write it, rather than appreciating much longer history of urban development in decline. As i said before, some people use these as a real organizing tool to revisit some of these issues, to study them very honestly and passionately. Some people on the liberal side, some more radical people. I think there is a way in which 1967 leads to a bifurcation in understanding American Cities, in understanding the course of American History for the rest of the 20th century. Michael market mentioned some of the positives that resulted from the rebellion. One thing i look at when we were talking backstage about my memory of the newark riots. I was thinking i remember and see it into my consciousness i lived in new york city at the time. A couple of years after that, i remember feeling when ken gibson was elected mayor of newark, the first africanamerican mayors in the northeast of the united states. Even though i did not fully understand what was happening, it felt like a type of victory to me. It felt good. It did not make a difference. It was a victory. And it did make a difference. You had someone in office who understood the majority population. Who, certainly, when he first got into office was concerned about improving conditions in the city. All of those reports that have been stacking up collecting dust about what needed to be done. I am sure he read and launched on a campaign to improve things. The school board, in 1967 it began to change complexion. As did other Government Agencies and nonGovernment Agencies. Was having a black merit enough . Black mayor enough . No. Having a black figurehead without the proper support and enough to turn around the city . Of course not. We were fullest to ever think that could happen, in my opinion. It helps, but it certainly did not resolve the issues that face the city in 1967, and some of those issues we are still working with now. It is a poor city. It takes a multilevel approach to resolve things. He put us on our way. Michael you agree with that . I agree with that, but lets go back before ken was elected. Most of us do not want the rebellion. There was analysis of the cause the breakdown. We have to say, what good came out of the rebellion. First was identity. Before the newark rebellion, black people do not call themselves black. We were negroes. Nobody use that term before this. Afterwards, there was a whole change in the complexion, no pun intended, of the city. The other thing was strategic advantage. We look after the fire had died out, the smoke had cleared and phil hudson was my roommate and later became a chairman. We said, these people are scared of us. There was a ripple all across the city as people came out and understood that. What did we do . I put my law students to work on looking at urban renewal. One of the things that was the most important urban renewal project at the time was the giant medical school. It was a medical school off golf course they wanted. 150 acres. That was one of the reasons it was humiliating us to begin with. Landmark cases michael just explain why that was. It would take 20,000 black people and puerto rican people, take away their houses. It was clear that was not the only there were 13 or 14 projects in that time. It was the second most renewed projects in the country next to north virginia. The purpose was not only to clear the land for developers to make money, but it was also to get black when girardi. That was going to stop the people in power. We were able to make a long story short, we were able to, because of that and visible brother with the brick, we were able to negotiate a settlement, which cut the medical school acres in half. We got 60 acres of urban renewal land to build houses. That housing still exists today. We built more than 900 houses, this was community groups. We integrated the workforce, the Construction Workforce for the first time. People know about the philadelphia plan, but the newark land was the successful plan of that era in integrating the workforce. People say we all have any black people, we cant find black people, we said, you have to train them. We told the state, you have to pay for the training of the people for the community and we set up something called the newark construction trades training program. The trend over 600 black and puerto rican men. Women were not considered at that time for construction. Many of them went on and became part of the union. Not without subsequent struggle, but that was the beginning of it. We got the medical school to take over the health care in the city. Closing down what we used to call the meme market and using that new high school, which they originally wanted for heart transplants and experimentations. The third thing, and i will stop, coalition building. Up to this point we were a vast array of unpredictable, but valeant organizations. After the rebellion, medical school site was the first time we all came together, all the way from the naacp. One of the things i was able to do was to get the students up at yale, who got the school of architecture to develop an alternate plan. Which we showed in 17 acres what they wanted to do in 150 acres. That became the rallying cry for all of the organizations. There was nobody left. Except for tthe black people at city hall. Mark i just want to add quickly as we talk about the outcomes of the rebellion, and building on what has already been said. One of the most important things was the way that those five days, and the great tragedy and death and violence of those five days completely delegitimated the existing power structure in new york. They showed what contempt they had for black residents of newark. They showed they cannot control the city, that they do not have the consent of residence. When the governor decided to pull the National Guard and the state police out, it is because he was advised by some of the people that he is talking about. Some of local Community Organizers and activists to do so. They argued the presence of these troops was inflaming the situation. They were the ones keeping the violence going. There is a way in which the power structure delegitimated the Community Forces and they really got to show what they could do. Im glad you pointed that out. It is striking to me how so many things change, like reading, i think the police chief comes out and it is the middle of the day, they are hiding behind cars, National Guardsman i there and the fellow walks out into the middle of the street. He walked out and people pan