Editor's note: This article was included in the latest Diversity Committee newsletter. To see the full newsletter, as well as prior editions, click here.
“First the military tanks, then heroin, then crack, then the guns, then the takeover of urban schools—but before that, a snapshot of pre-1967 from the first floor of the E.W. Scudder Public Housing Projects.” -- Linda McDonald Carter
As it is today and for every generation, Music is the inspiration and salve of daily moments of living. The songs, referenced herein, are indelibly seared into our psyche: upon reading or hearing the words, the moments become present in our very being. In the recounting of the narrative of the period of pre-1967, the songs are used to stir the cognitive processes that store the information locked in spaces of our minds yet to be released and confronted. Please feel free to play, listen, and read…..
Callin' out around the world
Are you ready for a brand-new beat?
Summer's here and the time is right
For dancin' in the streets...
All we need is music, sweet music
There'll be music everywhere
There'll be swingin', swayin' and records playin'
And dancing in the street
Oh, it doesn't matter what you wear
Just as long as you are there
So come on, every guy grab a girl
Everywhere around the world
There'll be dancing
...
This is an invitation
Across the nation
A chance for folks to meet
There'll be laughin' and singin' and music swingin'
And dancing in the streets [Martha and the Vandells]
This article is written to commemorate and reflect upon the 50th anniversary of the City of Newark’s Rebellion 1967. It places the adolescent experiences of Linda McDonald Carter at the center of the discussion, and recognizes the families, individuals, and children who placed their bodies and souls against the state and local government military apparatus to rage against racial, social, and economic discrimination.
Many believe the path to equity is through the process of a more inclusive paradigm under the umbrella of diversity, initially implemented by President Harry S. Truman in 1948 to integrate the armed services by Executive Order 9981. Decades later, the fight to end the legacy of racial discrimination remains urgent and fierce. This legacy continues to deepen the racial, economic, social, and educational disparities between Black and White people, at all levels of society.
The lived conditions and movements of the oppressed people are yet to be recognized as integral to the full accounting of social, political, cultural and economic historical transformations in human history. In the United States of America, the history of human development and relations is forever codified in the irreconcilable de jure expressions of freedom and chattel slavery grounded in the philosophical construct of white supremacy that shackles the nation to the social mythology of white superiority at the condemnation of blackness and other cultures. Black families in the midst of the great migration had to settle into neighborhoods both by de jure and de facto policies aimed at constructing and designing racial borders for Black people.
Pre-1967 Newark epitomized the new bustling metropolitan northeastern cities. It was a settler town for many families and individuals of the long migration North [from 1870 to 1972] seeking social and economic freedom and mobility from the servitude and serfdom of the sharecropping South with the terror of the Klu Klux Klan. As the populations of these Northern cities evolved came cultural and economic shifts. These changes began to create deep de facto, but in effect de jure, segregated communities forged by law and public policy.1 Like these cities, Newark [pre-1967] had a dual representation of America: one of great human hope and possibility, and the other of pernicious dehumanization; and in so doing, fully manifested the sociological determinants of the burgeoning rebellion.
In the period that this article references, Linda McDonald Carter’s family called E.W. Scudder Public Housing in the city of Newark, home, along with some 4,999 other people in the eight 13-floor red brick buildings with 1,872 units on two square blocks: including one for senior citizens located between Springfield Avenue to the North and Belmont Avenue in the west as well as West Kinney Street to the south, and High Street (now Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd.) in the east. Despite these tight physical conditions, it was a community where people lived their lives with possibility, drive, commitment, hope, love, respect, dignity, value, and laughter. Ms. Carter describes with a smile, “we would play, laugh, dance, cry, and sing together. It was a safe haven for us children.”
As an attorney, Ms. Carter knows that generally, in criminal law, there is a body of evidence that suggest people’s memories are flawed, and to reduce the possibility of the misidentification of a suspect such must be corroborated. To this end, her memories, herein presented, serve not to romanticize a former lived reality but to corroborate the accounts through the stories they (still-living former residents of the former Scudder housing) share at each annual reunion over the past twenty years.
(In Linda Carter’s words: keep in mind, the culturally collective community, as I define it, is a shared living experience built on a set of norms and values to promote a self-sustaining group of individuals, families and children. This has its origins in the remnants of our ancient African ancestral heritage.)
As children, we did not know we were financially poor because we were rich in spirit. This spirit brought about creativity, discovery, exploration, resourcefulness, ingenuity, innovation, collaboration, and just plain old living, all the while having fun. I do not remember poverty being as mean as it is today—stripping folks of their value, dignity, humanity, spirit and soul. Yes, we had a home base in public housing, but we also had the chance to create job opportunities from our own inspiration and creativity. We could carve out a living that was enough to keep us housed, fed and clothed. Black men shined the shoes of the businessmen coming through Newark’s Penn Station and earned enough money to get a room for a week in a rooming house, or a nominal rate room from Father Divine’s Hotel of Riviera. I don’t recall seeing stark homelessness of any degree.
On an average, most folks only had four pairs of shoes—maybe a pair of bucks; loafers or sling backs for school; one pair of sneakers for gym and summer; and a pair of dress shoes for Easter and for church. No one bought clothes bearing someone else’s name, as in designer wear.
If someone ‘hit the numbers at the racetrack’ for a penny, nickel, dime, quarter or [rarely] a dollar, it provided additional income for necessities. If enough winnings were had, one could open a small business. (Some may recall, the state Lottery replaced the community numbers business.)
The only fast food place in Newark that I recall was “White Castle”, where most people visited once a year for a hamburger treat. Mothers would purchase fresh vegetables from the Prince Street food market regularly and the Mulberry Street food market for the Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. In the summer, folks bought watermelons, cantaloupe, collard and mustard greens, turnips and other fresh produce on Irvine Turner Blvd from men who drove their trucks up from farms in South Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Virginia.
Candy was a rare luxury. Children would be lucky to get jelly beans and maybe a chocolate egg for Easter. As children, we would get an assortment of candy from trick-or-treating on Halloween, hazelnuts for Thanksgiving and hard peppermint candy canes for Christmas.
Here’s a quick rundown of other memories:
• There were no drugs.
• There were no guns.
• The Milkmen dropped off cold milk in glass bottles at our door and no one tampered with it—yes, even in the projects.
• The Black Panthers had a library on Springfield Avenue.
• A child was never homeless; some adult would step up and open up their home.
• Members of the Nation of Islam were selling their papers and protecting the neighborhood.
• Each family was responsible for scrubbing and waxing the hallway floor and washing the walls as a condition of living in public housing. The janitors only cleaned the common areas—grounds, stairwells and the first floor of the building.
• My fourth and sixth grades Jewish teachers taught me about Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.
• Returning Vietnam veterans (my elders) taught young people about global politics and geography.
• Black teachers wore afros and dashikis.
• Guys in grammar school were taught shop to be able to fix and build things.
• Girls in grammar school were taught home economics, which trained them to manage the family budget; along with cooking and sewing.
• Dr. Reed, a black pharmacist ran the local pharmacy (it was the only pharmacy-folks were healthy), Black owned candy stores, bars, and hair shops.
• Regular and numerous school trips exposed us to the outside world.
• Parents bought furniture and clothing from stores lining Springfield Avenue.
• Large playgrounds were used for jump rope, hop scotch, kickball and baseball, not parking.
• Running in and out and playing from one family apartment to another with other children was commonplace.
• Being chased through the hallways then up and down the 13 floors of stairwells was unknowing preparation for running track and race walking.
• Groups of young guys with hopes of being the next singing sensation (Motown group) used the hallways and stairwells to practice singing acapella, because the acoustics were great.
• If a girl became pregnant, she and her young man would have a ‘shotgun wedding,’ to shield her parents and/or community from shame, or she would be required to attend the Central or West Side High School evening program to complete her schooling and be away from the other girls attending school during the day.
• Children stayed after school on the school grounds to play kickball, basketball or engage in other activities for children.
• Sixth grade patrol boys volunteered as cross walk guards and controlled traffic to keep younger students safe as they crossed the street.
• Older men never wore jeans and sneakers, and older women always wore girdles
These memories exist alongside observations of the dehumanizing costs Blacks experienced in pre-1967 Newark:
• Before you moved into Scudder Homes Public Housing Project representatives from Newark Housing Authority visited unannounced to determine the parental skills of parents and cleanliness of the household.
• About a year or two after moving into our unit the ceiling plaster started peeling and falling as a result of poor materials and construction.
• The heat in the winter was uncomfortable, forcing residents to keep windows open, even during the winter.
• In summer, the only way to cool off was to sit outside and wait for the sun to set.
• There was limited access to middle-class and civil service jobs, most were working-class factory jobs. (My father, a World War II veteran, had one at General Motors in Linden.)
• Inferior schools were detrimental to our scholarly development.
• Massively over-crowded classrooms showed limited urban planning by the government officials.
• Egregious corruption was present in municipal government. (Even at 12 years old this was easy to discern.)
These long years bear witness to the cruelty and torture of a de jure segregated North that has left its mark on a yet-to-be reconciled city. The current data on the city of Newark demonstrate the consequences of a gutted economy, a marginalized political construct, and a fractured community as highlighted by the latest New Jersey Institute for Social Justice Report. History shows us that these are the similar conditions of the northern cities that fermented and inspired the rebellions of the 1960s.
The 1967 rebellion in the Central Ward of Newark offers us an opportunity to deconstruct the long history and legacy of segregation in the United States of America as we struggle to reconcile freedom and chattel slavery.
“Harmony is the key my sisters and brothers
People can’t wait cause another day might be too late
Come on get on the friendship train” [Gladys Knight & The Pips]
About the Authors
Linda McDonald Carter, Esq.
She is the director of the Paralegal Studies Program, Professor of Criminal Justice and Political Science, Essex County College and NJSBA member. She still resides in Newark’s Central Ward. She is a proud Community lawyer, people’s professor, active citizen, griot and community elder. She remembers our past, is woke in the present and ever weary of our future.
Josie Gonsalves
A public speaker, writer, moderator, and activist on issues of social, racial, economic justice; as well as a nonprofit executive of over two decades; and a PhD student with a research focus on reparative justice. She serves on several organizational boards, with a forte in building nonprofits.
Endnotes
1. Rothstein, R., 2017.