Associated Press
 National Guardsmen wielding rifles with bayonets advanced along Springfield Avenue in Newark on July 14, 1967. Twenty-three people were killed and 700 injured in rioting.
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Posted on 07/08/2007 3:20:43 PM PDT by neverdem
I have no magic answers.
We live in a world where people do things which may or may not be “right” by the “rules,” but may be neccessary.
The protests at abortion clinics by Operation Rescue back around 1990 were imitating the Civil Rights tactics.
At that time note that some bombings and killings involving abortionists and clinics occurred in the aftermath of their activities, too.
The principle in my mind is that non-violent coercion like sit-ins-blockades can lead to violence.
Maybe the answer is that we need to pick the right fight to start a movement like that because the results could be deadly.
When Terri Schiavo was starved to death in 2005 a few dozen brave souls (including children like during the segregation protests of the 60’s) walked onto the hospice property and got arrested.
Wow, what if a million people showed up to do that?
I’m still thinking about this one.
But the principle that non-violent confrontation can lead to violent confrontation is established in my mind.
Sort of like Rhodesia (and now S. Africa) writ small. Ah well, just b/c something's un-PC doesn't mean it's wrong.
>>>many people here still cannot agree on what to call the five nights of gunfire, looting and flames that disemboweled the geographic midsection of this city
I just that it was a day and night on the town :P
>>>There are no public monuments to mark the episode that painted Newark as a national symbol of racial disparity, police brutality and urban despair,
There is a symbolic one. The ‘mayor for life’ is no more.
bumping for emphasis
Can you deny that it was? History isn't all happy. This is no different from San Francisco commemorating the earthquake or Chicago remembering the great fire ... with the noteworthy exception that those focused on celebrating how those cities rebuilt and recovered, while newark has little to celebrate.
Of those three, I'd say Newark has had the strongest recovery -- which isn't saying much. Anything that close to New York is gonna attract folks when land gets cheap enough.
Camden, on the other hand, offers only proximity to Philadelphia -- a city that is itself in decline.
13 years ago, I lived in Cherry Hill for a few months for a job, and I did a lot of driving around on the weekends. Sometimes into Philadelphia to see the historical sites and the museum, and sometimes just around, since this was an area of the country I knew nothing about. Once, I made a wrong turn and ended up in Camden.
It was unlike anything I had ever seen. Every city has pockets of blight, but this was block upon block upon block without a single house that looked occupied or a single business that looked open. It was downright post-apocalyptic. My right foot was ready to punch the gas pedal and get the hell out of dodge, running every red light along the way, if it came to that.
In the more-populated areas, i noticed that people stepped back off the curb a little,as if they were hanging back and letting me pass. Gang-bangers on the corner not only didn't hassle me, but they seemed to be avoiding eye contact. These folks were scared of me?
Gradually, it dawned. My employer had rented me a Lincoln Town Car. Any 20-something kid with a ponytail and the b---s to drive through Camden in a brand new Town Car had to be with the Mob. Rutgers students were too smart to go into that part of town.
Detroit got a double-whammy. In the years when it might have recovered from the riots, the US auto industry, the vast majority of its job base, started a decline that hasn't stopped in the last three and a half decades. So now I could buy a well-built house in decent shape in Detroit for next to nothing, but once I'm there, what do I do? Where do I work, and where do I shop? It lacks the economic ecosystem for a place where people want to live.
Proximity to NYC doesn't hurt, either. I don't know northern NJ well, and I'll defer if you tell me I'm mistaken, but the Guiliani-era [*] resurgence of the City, and the rising property values in the Village, TriBeCa, and even Harlem -- um, I mean Washington Heights --has got to boost interest in affordable real estate a short train ride from jobs in town.
I don't know from Paterson or Irvington, and Philadelphia isn't driving the kind of growth NYC is, so Camden isn't getting the same kind of benefit.
[*} Era, as in time frame. NYC had a remarkable renaissance that started before and flowered in the 1990s. My first trip to NYC was in 1991, my second in 1999. Night and day. Not just the big, flashy successes like Times Square; there were fewer "bad neighborhoods," but even the "good neighborhoods" of 1991 were better in 1999.
For purposes of the present discussion, it doesn't matter whether the credit should go to Rudy, Bernie Kerik, or the Blue Fairy. It's certainly not an endorsement of Rudy's presidential candidacy. So let's please save those arguments for the many, many threads on the subject.
Police in the Sixties riots should have shot to kill. Society would be a better place today if they had.
LOL
Please....
It was a riot, it spelled the death of the city in any practical sense.
Calling it a “rebellion” is nonsense. 40 years later the place is a dump.... It was a riot pure and simple, that killed what was once a city that held promise.
Now its a Sec 8 burned out dump.
So it gave city hall to the race-hustling dems, who have brought it lower and lower to its present hopeless state.
Liberal policies made it so, not Bush, not whites (except liberal whites).
Not to be contradictory here, but people used to say Newark “got that way” from being close to New York, especially after the transportation improved. Why go to the Mosque Theatre when you could hop on the 118 and go to Carnegie Hall? Ditto for the planetarium and everything else.
I’m not sure how accurate this is, but a friend of mine who studied black history at Dartmouth said there was some evidence that Newark obtained its large black population because when the train stopped at “Newark, Penn Station,” people thought the conductor was saing “New York, Penn Station.” They all knew those Yankees couldn’t talk straight, so why not? This must be NY!
Valid points, but there’s a huge difference between marking the anniversary of a natural disaster or other catastrophe and marking the anniversary of something that is symptomatic of cultural dysfunction.
Newark's black population, btw, is at 57% and dropping. It was as high as 69% in the mid 1980s.
My father worked in the defense industry during WWII. Making airplanes. At Brewster and I think one other plant.
National Guardsmen wielding rifles with bayonets advanced along Springfield Avenue in Newark on July 14, 1967. Twenty-three people were killed and 700 injured in rioting.
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