NJ Activists Will Hit The Streets On Anniversary Of ‘Newark Rebellion’

NEWARK, NJ — An annual march that commemorates the “Newark Rebellion” will return to the Brick City this week.

The People’s Organization for Progress (POP) is spearheading this year’s rally, which will begin at 5 p.m. on Friday, July 12 at Rebellion Monument Park, 250 Springfield Avenue. Participants will march to the former 1st Precinct – the spot where the violence ignited more than five decades ago.

The memory of the infamous 1967 race riots in Newark – which many are now calling a “rebellion” – still brings fire to the hearts of many people in New Jersey's largest city. See Related: Newark Remembers 1967 Uprising: ‘Not A Riot, A Rebellion’

Here’s how city officials have described what led to the events of 1967:

“The Rebellion was fueled by racial disparities in policing and arrests, unequal access to resources and opportunities, and civic disenfranchisement. On the evening of July 12, 1967, John Smith, a black cab driver, was dragged out of his car and brutally beaten by police. His attackers then arrested him on charges of assault. News spread and Newark residents rose up. The uprising and police violence lasted for six days, resulting in 26 deaths and thousands of injuries and arrests – overwhelmingly affecting Black residents.”

Local community activists – many of whom lived through the violence – have said it caused a shockwave that still echoes to this day.

“The last several years have seen the Newark Police Department go through a major reform effort as a consequence of the implementation of a federal consent decree,” the POP stated in a news release.

“However, as this goes to press, even after several years of a pointed effort to make real police reform, and after the establishing of a nationally acclaimed civilian operated community-based violence intervention ‘ecosystem’ credited for driving down violent crime to historic lows just within the last several years, many Newarkers are still ‘distrustful’ of the police,” organizers continued, citing a recent poll from Fairleigh Dickinson University.

• See Related: Newark Police Union, Community Groups Clash As Mayor Urges Unity

POP organizers alleged that some of the issues driving this mistrust include “racially biased stops,” the “unaddressed” police killing of Carl Dorsey in 2021, and a civilian review board that has been “hamstrung of genuine authority for real accountability by legislators wary of reprisals of police unions.” Other complaints include the use of undercover officers that some community members have dubbed the “Jump Out Boys,” and the case of the Rodwell-Spivey brothers, who have been continued to be “harassed” long after their controversial confrontation with police in 2021.

“Do we realize that if we had Civilian Review Boards like what we are fighting for here in Newark, George Floyd would still be alive in Minnesota and Carl Dorsey would still be alive in Newark,” commented Lawrence Hamm, a POP founder and former U.S. Senate candidate.

While there are many battles still to be waged in Newark when it comes to policing, the complicated legacy left in the wake of the 1967 uprising has a bittersweet silver lining, the POP added:

“Although the historic uprising would take 26 lives and led to long-term disinvestment of New Jersey’s largest city, it would also ignite a wave of protest and organizing that would make Newark the epicenter of the Black Power Movement of those times and that would forever change the political landscape in segregated American cities. It would lead to the elections of a new generation of Black elected officials in largely Black communities by the full use and mobilization of a new access to the ballot and more. In Newark, that would mean electing the late Ken Gibson the first Black Mayor of a major eastern seaboard city and displacing urban gangster apartheid that brutally chained local politics prior to that groundbreaking election in June 1970.”

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