When I was a child, I had elderly relatives who lived in Newark, New Jersey. We’d visit them now and then. They lived in an old apartment building that had a European quality (as did their furnishings), with very high ceilings and fancy moldings. They weren’t rich, but they were solidly middle-class, and the city was safe.
Some time later they moved to the suburbs, nearer their children. The last time I visited Newark was probably in the late 60s, and it already wasn’t a place where you would want to be. Recently I did some genealogical research and found out that a bunch of my relatives going way way back are buried in Newark as well. But then I discovered that you can only visit these cemeteries nowadays with a police escort, and that they’d been quite thoroughly vandalized anyway.
In a way, that’s the story of Newark, about which I became more curious – in particular, in light of the recent rioting across America.
The story of Newark is actually more complicated than one might think. And more familiar. By the 1800s the place was already thriving:
Newark has long been the largest city in New Jersey. Founded in 1666, it greatly expanded during the Industrial Revolution, becoming the commercial and cultural hub of the region. Its population grew with various waves of migration in the mid 20th century, peaking in 1950.
That would be when I knew it – at its peak.
Newark was founded by Puritans (now, that was a surprise to me) and named “New Ark” for “New Ark of the covenant.” The Puritans were in tight control till the mid-1700s, and then in the early 1800s the city grew tremendously because of the rise of the leather business there (patent leather was invented in Newark):
The middle 19th century saw continued growth and diversification of Newark’s industrial base. The first commercially successful plastic — Celluloid — was produced in a factory on Mechanic Street by John Wesley Hyatt. Hyatt’s Celluloid found its way into Newark-made carriages, billiard balls, and dentures. Dr. Edward Weston perfected a process for zinc electroplating, as well as a superior arc lamp in Newark. Newark’s Military Park had the first public electric lamps anywhere in the United States. Before moving to Menlo Park, Thomas Edison himself made Newark home in the early 1870s. He invented the stock ticker in the Brick City.
Innovation and manufacturing. The insurance business was added, and the city continued to boom:
As Newark’s population approached a half million in the 1920s, the city’s potential seemed limitless. It was said in 1927: “Great is Newark’s vitality. It is the red blood in its veins – this basic strength that is going to carry it over whatever hurdles it may encounter, enable it to recover from whatever losses it may suffer and battle its way to still higher achievement industrially and financially, making it eventually perhaps the greatest industrial center in the world”.
Post-WWII, however, the city became depleted because of many financial incentives favoring the suburbs, plus a highway system that did the same. The inner city became the refuge of the poor, and of more and more of the black inhabitants who had flocked to Newark as part of the Great Migration when the city was still coasting on its reputation as a city of opportunity [my emphasis]:
The city made serious mistakes with public housing and urban renewal, although these were not the sole causes of Newark’s tragedy. Across several administrations, the city leaders of Newark considered the federal government’s offer to pay for 100% of the costs of housing projects as a blessing. The decline in industrial jobs meant that more poor people needed housing, whereas in prewar years, public housing was for working-class families. While other cities were skeptical about putting so many poor families together and were cautious in building housing projects, Newark pursued federal funds. Eventually, Newark had a higher percentage of its residents in public housing than any other American city…
From 1950 to 1960, while Newark’s overall population dropped from 438,000 to 408,000, it gained 65,000 non-whites. By 1966, Newark had a black majority, a faster turnover than most other northern cities had experienced. Evaluating the riots of 1967, Newark educator Nathan Wright, Jr. said, “No typical American city has as yet experienced such a precipitous change from a white to a black majority.” The misfortune of the Great Migration and Puerto Rican migration was that Southern blacks and Puerto Ricans were moving to Newark to be industrial workers just as the industrial jobs were decreasing sharply.
The changes accelerated, with what used to be known as “white flight,” and redlining:
During the 1950s alone, Newark’s white population decreased by more than 25 percent from 363,000 to 266,000. From 1960 to 1967, its white population fell further to 46,000. Although in-migration of new ethnic groups combined with white flight markedly affected the demographics of Newark, the racial composition of city workers did not change as rapidly.
At the point, the stage was set for the riots of 1967. A black population frustrated by the fact that they had come to the city just as the city’s jobs were dying, and a police force that remained predominantly white, because the turnover there was understandably not as fast. The riots were sparked by the now-familiar scenario of a police action that was resented:
Despite being one of the first cities in the country to hire black police officers, the department’s demographics remained at odds with the city’s population, leading to poor relations between black people and the police department. Only 145 of the 1,322 police officers in the city were black (11%), mirroring national demographics, while the city grew to be over 50% black…
This unrest and social change came to a head when two white Newark police officers, John DeSimone and Vito Pontrelli, arrested a black cab driver, John William Smith, on the evening of July 12. After signaling, Smith passed the double parked police car, after which he was pursued and pulled over by the officers. He was arrested, beaten by the officers and taken to the 4th Police Precinct, where he was charged with assaulting the officers and making insulting remarks.
Residents of Hayes Homes, a large public housing project, saw an incapacitated Smith being dragged into the precinct, and a rumor was started that he had been beaten to death while in police custody. The rumor spread quickly, and a large crowd soon formed outside the precinct. At this point, accounts vary, with some saying that the crowd threw rocks through the precinct windows and police then rushed outside wearing hard hats and carrying clubs. Others say that police rushed out of their station first to confront the crowd, and then they began to throw bricks, bottles, and rocks.
There’s a great deal more at the link. Of course, this happened in the days before there were police videocams, and before every single person on the street carried a handy video recording device, so we really don’t know what happened to Smith at the hands of the police and/or vice versa. But, as we’ve learned so many times, rumors fly and then the riots begin. In the case of Newark in 1967, by the time the smoke had cleared:
…riots, looting, violence, and destruction left a total of 16 civilians, 8 suspects, a police officer, and a firefighter dead; 353 civilians, 214 suspects, 67 police officers, 55 firefighters, and 38 military personnel injured; and 689 civilians and 811 suspects arrested and property damage is expected to have exceeded $10 million.
That was over fifty years ago. Newark has never recovered, but as you can see it was in bad straits even before the riots and would almost certainly have had trouble recovering even without them. The riots exacerbated the situation, however.
In recent years, Newark has been struggling to come back. But it’s been slow going (the link is from last November):
…[The plan for a new multi-business development] comes at a pivotal moment for Newark, a city that has long exemplified the struggles of America’s fading manufacturing hubs.
The proposal for the stadium site is just one of several residential and commercial projects with the potential to accelerate the slow but steady transformation Newark has experienced in recent years.
With the city’s star on the rise, local officials find themselves at a crossroads: They must manage the development Newark has long needed while avoiding the kind of gentrification that could push out its poorer and largely African-American residents.
…Elected officials and activists have vowed to prevent Newark from becoming, as the mayor often puts it, “the next Brooklyn” by making sure the city remains affordable.
Interesting. Initially, white people were blamed for “white flight” because they left a city that was obviously fading economically, and now they are not wanted – at least, not in large numbers – when the city is trying to revitalize itself. Newark’s selling point was that it was only a 20-minute train ride from New York City, and now that NY has fallen – or pushed itself – onto very hard times and an uncertain future, I’m not sure that there’s much hope on the horizon for Newark, either (although fortunately it has managed not to rip itself apart, post-Floyd).
“We’re trying to get that development to happen and get people investing in the city, while at the same time creating opportunities for the residents who live here in the city,” the mayor, Ras Baraka, said in an interview. “It’s not easy. There’s no city in America who’s actually figured it out. Everybody has been attempting to do this, including New York, and it’s been very and extremely difficult.”
I wrote about Mayor Ras Baraka (son of Amiri Baraka, aka Leroi Jones) in this post from 2014, when he was first elected. Baraka is a leftist, and in the past he’s spoken very disparagingly of the police, but he’s not as far gone as some of the mayors we’ve heard this summer:
“I think there needs to be significant reforms … [but] to get rid of the police department — who would respond to calls for service for violence and domestic abuse?”
And yet Baraka himself has been spearheading “significant reform” of the police for much of the time since he’s become mayor. Who would want to be a police officer in a city with the problems of Newark? And here, Baraka invokes the all-purpose phrase “structural racism”:
Stripping the department of its funding wouldn’t address underlying problems of structural racism and poverty, said Baraka, adding that “all of America’s institutions have the same problems the police department has.”
“The police just have guns.”
This post is already very long, much longer than I had originally intended or planned (that happens an awful lot here). And I’ve just scratched the surface; someone could write a book about it, and that someone isn’t me. But Newark is not atypical of a lot of cities these days – cities that lost their industrial bases long ago, and have been in grave trouble ever since. The problems take a visibly racial form, and the leftists in charge make the situation worse (IMHO), but the problems are also economic, cultural, real, and entrenched, and they aren’t easy to solve.
