American riots: seeking historical info, reflections, and personal stories on them

Thanks for any thoughts that you are willing to share.

placemarking-Detroiter-gathering-my-thoughts-for-later BUMP.

This may be a little long, but I think it is important to provide context. Here it gos:

Since I was born in 1976, my knowledge of the riots (or "uprisings" as my left wing professors called them) has been gained from history books, with the exception of the Newark Riots of 1967. My father's family had been in Newark since my Great-Grandfather decided to settle there in 1912. Although my grandmother and grandfather decided to leave Newark (taking my father and aunt with them) in 1962 to get a bigger house in nearby Rahway, the rest of my family was still living there in 1967 when the area surrounding downtown was burned and pillaged. Furthermore, even my grandparents continued to go there for their business and to shop.

Newark in the 1960s was divided into several neighborhoods largely defined by ethnicity. The eastern part of the city (where my family lived), known alternately as Ironbound or down-neck was largely inhabited by Polish and Italian immigrants and their descendents, as well as a small black population, who worked in the steel mills, breweries and other industries in the neighborhood. This neighborhood is cut off from downtown Newark by the railroad tracks, one of the key reasons the neighborhood remains decent today. Another larger Italian neighborhood was north of downtown. There were other "ethnic" areas in the city, but perhaps the most significant change in the postwar era was a large influx of blacks, who settled in the area north and west of downtown. According to my grandparents, Newark had not had a large black population until WWII when they came from all over the south to work in the factories while workers were away fighting the war. Race relations in the city were not ideal, but from the 40s through the early 60s, my relatives told me that most of the blacks they encountered on the job or on the bus were civil and polite. My father still finds it amazing that he had a paper route in a black neighborhood in the late 50s and didn't even think about it. By the mid-60s, however, upward mobility had pulled much of Newarks white inhabitants to the suburbs, although they continued to shop downtown and visit relatives there. My family stated that although downtown was visibly more black and increasingly unsafe, they still went shopping in what was at the time the largest commercial district in New Jersey (the Menlo Park Mall had only recently opened).

The turning point in my family's relationship with Newark (and that of its white inhabitants in general) came in the summer of 1967. According to my relatives, and corroborated by my own research, the black population had mounted several protests earlier in the year against the decision of the mayor (who was later indicted for raceteering) to appoint only white candidates to several posts (school board, city commission) that dealt directly with the black community. Tensions were therefore already high when the Newark police stopped a black motorist who had been drinking. A crowd gathered to check out the situation and when the cops attempted to restrain the arrestee, the mob became violent and the riot started.

My family vividly remembers the smoke blowing in from the downtown area. When the troubles first broke, everyone in the neighborhood thought that the situation had been contained on the fisrt night. When my great-uncle who was a cop told everyone "not to go downtown" and the smoke became noticeable, there was a feeling of nervousness within my family's community. Many cops lived in the area, so there was naturally concern for their safety. When the national guard appeared headed for downtown people cheered (I've heard from accounts by guardsmen that the white inhabitants of the neighborhoods they drove through said "get the niggers" as they passed, although my own family has never shown any outward prejudice around me).

My great-uncle said that the key strategy at the time was to contain the riots to the area immediately surrounding downtown, particularly around Springfield Avenue, the main drag in the black neighborhood. In this effort, they largely succeeded, although a constant problem througout the riots was a lack of communication between the Guard and the police, with the police thinking many of the guardsmen were snipers and vice versa. In many situations early on when manpower was short, all the cops could do was drive really fast in a sort of convoy down Springfield Avenue.

Another anecdote never to be found in historical accounts of the riot, but related to my family, was the involvement of organized crime. The major mafia families in the area made a pact as soon as hostilities broke out that if the rioters went past the train station (the main dividing line between the black and white ethnic communities) they would retaliate with force. The capos made sure to get the message to their "connections" in the black community. It is unknown whether this had any effect on containing the riots but it is interesting nonetheless.

The riots were immediately followed by a small backlash throughout the white community. A butcher and community activist named Anthony Imperiale actually bought a surplus Sherman Tank following the riots which he used to patrol the neighborhood (he was elected to the state legislature in 1968). George Wallace was warmly received when he campaigned there the same year. My family's experience was, however, more typical of most white Newarkies. Following the riots they stopped going downtown, as most business were destroyed or pulled out completely, a development from which downtown never recovered. With the exception of a great aunt and uncle, all of my family moved out of Newark in the early 70s, although their neighborhood was rejuvenated by an influx of Portuguese immigrants (again, it also helped that it was cut off from the now majority black city by the railroad tracks). Whenever I pushed relatives to tell me their opinion on the riots, a common sentiment was how, as the children of immigrants, they were astounded as to why the blacks burned down their own neighborhoods (due to the destruction, the FHA settled many displaced blacks in inner suburbs like Irvington and East Orange, which saw an overnight population change in their racial makeup as a result). My family and others in Ironbound took pride in their own neighborhoods and could not fathom a reason for such wanton destruction.

Newark today is a mere shadow of its former self. It has been under black rule since the early 70s and with the exception of Prudential Insurance, all major employers have left the city, deeply eroding the tax base. From a high population of about 500,000 in 1950, it has dropped to 240,000. My older relatives remain saddened to see what happend to the once thriving downtown which had theatres, the first Bambergers in the nation and a larger collection of Cherry Blossoms than DC.

BTW: The Cuban Refugees were CRIMINALS SENT BY CASTRO who most Cuban Americans here in Miami were happy to see in Arkansas Federal Prison. To this day, Cuban Americans down here use the term Marielito as a slur.

You should post a link to this in the Michigan forum, or flag some other people on the earlier thread. This should be an interesting discussion, although few seem to be taking part.

The major mafia families in the area made a pact as soon as hostilities broke out that if the rioters went past the train station (the main dividing line between the black and white ethnic communities) they would retaliate with force. The capos made sure to get the message to their "connections" in the black community. It is unknown whether this had any effect on containing the riots but it is interesting nonetheless.

The old Pennsylvania Railroad does separate downneck (east) from the rest (west) of Newark. The railroads serve as the neighborhood's boundary, and of course that's why it's also called the Ironbound. The old PRR is elevated: roads go east-west under the railbed.

We lived downneck from 1986 to 1990, and were told by those who'd been living there for decades, that when the rioters (arsonists) came to McCarter Highway (which parallels the old PRR, and is just to the west of the old PRR) and tried to enter the neighborhood through the streets under the railbed into the Ironbound, they were met by residents with firearms. Downneck's frame houses never burned.

Newark today is a mere shadow of its former self. It has been under black rule since the early 70s and with the exception of Prudential Insurance, all major employers have left the city, deeply eroding the tax base.

True about employers leaving, by and large, but Blue Cross and NJ Bell built some large office buildings, right by Penn Station, in the past 10 - 15 years.

Since you grew up in North Newark, I was wondering if you could give me your perspective on the '67 riots.

I'm sorry but I'm too young to have anything personal to add regarding the 1960's riots. I have a personal interest in the subject or riots having seen one major one growing up near Tompkins Square Park in NYC. The area has always been a hotbed of socialist influence (going back to the 19th century) and our local communist/anarchists had a major run-in with the NYPD during the late '80's that went on for a couple of nights if I recall correctly. I think part of it had to do with the hours the park was to remain open, and the other part was the large group of squatters laying claim to a number of dilapidated city-owned buildings in the area. At any rate, I was mesmerized by the sight of bottles and bricks being met with batons. I guess its the same reflex that makes people slow down when they see an accident on the side of the road. Its something I'll never forget, especially the sight of rioters being yanked out of trees by the police.

Going back quite a bit, NYC has been the sight of many such incidents. On May 8th we'll hit the anniversary of the 1849 Adtor Place riot, which was precipitated by mobs of both nativists and anti-British Irish immigrants. The cause, amazingly enough, was the fact that a famous British actor was here to play MacBeth. The National Guard fired on the mob and a total of 22 were killed.

Of course, one of the most famous NYC riots of the 19th century was the draft riot of July, 1863. This was one of the NYPD's finest moments. Groups of a few officers had to fight their way through hundreds of protestors to escort black citizens and protect their churches as well as save gun factories and newspaper offices. At least one precint was besieged, and a group of 200 officers charged through a mob of thousands in a mass baton charge. Rioters tried to block the landing of marines from the Brooklyn navy yard and were routed by the police. A local army colonel used artillery on the mob and was later torured to death in his own home. All in all, there were anywhere from a few hundred to somewher over 1000 killed in 5 straight days of mayhem. Glad I missed it.

Good luck getting something more personal. Hope this helped a little..

Following the riots they stopped going downtown, as most business were destroyed or pulled out completely, a development from which downtown never recovered.

I remember hearing about how one Newark neighborhood lost its only supermarket in the riots, and it took a good 30 years to get another one.

What timing. I just got home from a very fine dinner at the Spanish Tavern. Newark has improved since the 70s (new Arts Center, minor league baseball stadium, restoration of Penn Station, demolition of high rise public housing projects, etc.) but it will never be the city it was before the riots. The schools are hopeless. Traditional families are rare among the black population. The local government is corrupt. South Side High School has been renamed for Malcom X Shabazz. Historic High Street (which once boasted a row of mansions) is now "Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard." (Why are streets named after Martin Luther King always called "boulevards?"). Muhammed Ali Boulevard is home to a public housing project.

It's a crying shame. The museum and library are magnificent, as is Branch Brook Park and Sacred Heart Cathedral.

What timing. I just got home from a very fine dinner at the Spanish Tavern

My Dad (who grew up near Pulaski next to St. Casimir's) promised to take me there when we go up in August. When I was a kid, we used to go to Santa Lucia's, which closed a few years back. Since its closure, I don't think there are any Italian restaurants left in Ironbound, although the Polish grocery where my father worked is still there (Byks?).

I'm glad you enjoyed that earlier thread!

I actually know very little about riots which occurred in the major cities during the civil rights era. Like you, I wasn't alive then. Also, I really haven't read that much about them.

I do know a little about the 1962 race riot at Ole Miss though. May I suggest a pretty good book written on this subject? I haven't read all of it yet, but it seems well-researched and well-written. It's called American Insurrection: The Battle of Oxford, 1962 , by William Doyle.

Ordering Information + Reviews from Amazon.com

You might enjoy taking a look at this.

(((ping)))

I bet you know a thing or two about this. Maybe you could point out some good sources to Mr. Squat? See above.

I was 9 years old, and on an July Sunday my Dad & I were at Tiger Stadium watching a game with the Yankees. During the game, the announcer came on & asked everybody not to use a certain route when going home.

Dad was a real-estate appraiser for the city (yep, he was a taxman!), and he's probably driven down every street in the city, so he drove to the area we were supposed to avoid, taking the back streets. We assumed it was just a fire or something. Instead, as we drove through the neighborhoods, it looked like everybody was outside, almost as if they were having a block party. Except for one thing: Many people, young & old alike, were walking up the sidewalks from the main street, carrying TVs or other appliances in boxes. It was like they had just won the jackpot. Yes, it really was like a party.

Dad said to me, "remember this scene, Jenny. It's the start of a revolution."

I realized even then that was a bit of an overstatment, but it was a turning point for Detroit. Before 1967 neighborhoods were relatively stable, and most of the city was quite safe. But after the riots, the "For Sale" signs popped up all over, and the white middle class masses started a mass exodus to the safer suburbs.

We lived in a nice (working class) neighborhood out towards the Western city limits. We stayed there for a few years after the riots, but as each year passed you could see the wave of property crime & personal crime slowly work its way out towards us from downtown. I got mugged a couple times - once having my 10-speed bike pulled out from under me as I was riding it. In those neighborhoods closer in, people started installing bars on their windows & doors. We couldn't believe it - living like prisoners! It eventually became common to see TV ads for those bars, like you would see ads for new siding or window installation.

City employees had to live within the city, and since Dad was working towards his 30 years & out, we moved farther out to within a mile of the city limits, joining all the other white veteran policemen, firefighters, & bureaucrats in a "white ring" around the city.

When Dad retired in the late 70's, my parents finally moved to the suburbs. A year later the people who moved into our house got invaded right in the daylight.

Today Detroit is almost all black, with probably some other ethnicities thrown in. When I drove back to the old neighborhood, I was pleasantly surprised to see it hadn't turned into a hellhole like we who fled had assumed it would become. The neighborhood was actually being kept up quite well, and in front of the house I grew up in, a black teenager was mowing the lawn. It looks like a new generation of stable black families have found the neighborhood to be a bargain, and I hope they're mostly homeowners instead of renters. If so, good for them.

But the house I grew up in had bars on the windows & doors.

As a fan of the 'Generations' theories and writings of Strauss and Howe, I understand that many previous generations have gone through turbulent periods and declining values which they interpreted as being in the 'Last Fays', yet it turned out to be more cyclical than an actual decline.

Hmmm... I've never thought of looking at riots thru the lens of generational types. But - how would you explain the Detroit riots during WWII? That was a very different configuration than the riots of the 60's. I think the WWII riots had more to do with blacks coming up to Detroit from the South to work in the factories, similar to what Clemenza described in Newark.

Were there any riots in the 1870s or 1880s? I guess it wouldn't be too hard to find year-by-year statistics somewhere.

In the summer of 1965, I was a 17 year old high school (just) grad. My Dad got me a job as an apprentice carpenter, for a tract of new homes in San Clemente, California.

There was a young black journeyman carpenter--the only black guy on the job (he lived in Santa Ana). In 1965, there were established, but small neighborhoods of blacks in Santa Ana and in nearby Fullerton.

So one weekend the Watts riots take place, in Los Angeles. On Monday or Tuesday, during a break, the normally quiet black fellow commented: "I was going to go up to Los Angeles to see my mother, over the wekend, but those niggers are shooting niggers."

Excuse my language, but it is a direct quote, which I will never forget. Prior to 1965, white people wouldn't be afraid to ravel through black areas, like Watts.

A couple of years later, when I had several trips to make from La Mirada, to LAX, the most direct route was westward on Imperial Blvd.--directly through a largely black section of the LA sprawl. We always chatted, about whether we should take that route. We did, and nothing happened.

The Rodney King riots were in 1992, I seem to recall. It amazes me that people burn down their own neighborhoods. In South-Central LA, the hispanics today are the majority. They rioted, alongside the blacks; seen on television live, stealing from stores.

That time, burnings occured along Pacific Coast Highway, in Long Beach.

I remember the Newark riots, I was 10 years old at the time.

I was in Iowa when the riots started visiting Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, and cousins. I can remember waking up one summer morning and taking a look at the morning newspaper and seeing many pages of pictures of Newark and the full blown riots that had started the day before. I could not believe that there were pictures of Newark NJ in the local newspaper and that there were riots going on just a few miles from where my family and I lived.

Our Iowa vacation was just about over and we soon returned to the NJ suburb where I grew up, aprox. 10 miles west of Newark. When we arrived the riots were still going on and I can remember that many people were worried that the rioters were about to march up Springfield Ave and into our town to loot and burn. There was talk that neighbors were armed and ready but thankfully this never happened.

All these years later I frequently go Down Neck to enjoy the excellent Portuguese food and meet some hot Brazilian ladies.

After MLK got killed, we were told to stay on "this side of the tracks" which was Latham Park in Greensboro, NC. The white people were afraid the blacks would "march on Irving Park" which was the rich section where we lived. It never came close to happening but it got everyone riled up. Most of the problems stayed in the A&T University campus (Jesse Jackson played football there). There are still bullet holes in some of the buildings.

I met a deputy at a Lions club BBQ and he told me that he shot a black panther named Larry Little during a shootout at their house. Little is now a shakedown attorney in Winston-Salem NC.

the riot in LA (happened in april) about the roddney king verdict.
There were two things I noticed, either the government was beating and shooting people that rioted or the government turned their back and the property owners had to fend for themselves.

I do have some vivid memories of thugs beating passerbys in LA

Thank God, I've never been anywhere near a riot. But I can give some perspective of seeing the coverage of such, through mature eyes.
If we think about it we would, I think, agree that journalism--especially broadcast journalism--has some ability to affect how serious the situation gets. My recollection is that journalism treated the Rodney King riot as a force of nature, not something that certain people were doing of their own volition.
Broadcast journalism replayed the standard journalists' version of the Rodney King tape, edited to show the worst that happened to Mr. King and none of the context (that Mr. King was arrested after a high speed chase and that Mr. King then resisted arrest--in the process behaving in a way that suggested to the police that Mr. King had learned from convicts how to attempt to get control of a policeman's gun). Broadcast journalism reported, in real time, where the police were not. Broadcast journalism broadcast "no justice, no peace" interviews of black activists on an equal basis, at least, with officials responsible for maintaining law and order.
In the coverage of the intifada we see that journalism gives voice to claims that the law-and-order authorities are "brutal" and that the Assassins are not thinking human beings but are constrained as if by gravity to respond to the existence of Jews in an suicidal rage.
To understand the behavior of journalism in unsettled times like the Rodney King riot, you must IMHO view the situation from the utterly selfish point of view of the journalist. Journalists are in their glory when people are seriously worried. They accordingly behave exactly as if they hope the situation gets worse.
It is only through that lens that I can understand what I see on TV--that broadcast journalism, far from ameliorating the situation, very strongly tends to inflame it. It is a harsh charge, but I see scant evidence for a contrary conclusion.
Broadcast journalism is not the press, if it were you and I would be able to do it without a license just as we could start up a newspaper without a license. I still marvel that broadcast journalism doesn't get its socks sued off by the victims of unrest which journalism "extinguished" with a spray of gasoline.