Civil Rights and Black Power

Like people around the world- especially in Asia and Africa- who had been swept up in World War II, African Americans who fought in the war faced their post-war lives with a sharpened perspective on global conflicts, and their own role in them. The World War II generation produced many dedicated organizers against racism who would teach and inspire the activists of the 1960s and 70s.

The Civil Rights Congress
One organization in the post-WWII civil rights movement was the Civil Rights Congress (CRC.) From 1946 to 1956, they worked to defend both black people and white political dissidents from unjust charges. The Civil Rights Congress was supported by the Communist Party, and their anti-racism work included campaigns to prosecute whites for lynchings, and to free black prisoners.

In New Jersey, they were key in the defense of the Trenton Six. The 1948 Trenton case revolved around the murder of a white furniture salesman, bludgeoned with a glass bottle and robbed of fifty dollars. Witnesses said they saw two, three, or four black teenagers at the murder scene. The Trenton police then arrested six random black men, with little evidence that they were even in the city at the time, and all six were swiftly sentenced to death. Bessie Mitchell, a sister of one man sentenced to death, explained how she asked the NAACP for help, but they would not take action.

So, she said, she asked the Communist Party for help, because “God knows we couldn't be no worse off than we are now.” The CRC got involved, and raised awareness through a media campaign. In the end, no men were executed – four were released while two were sentenced to jail. Mitchell's brother, Collis English, died of a heart attack soon after his jail sentencing. The other jailed man, Ralph Cooper, was released five years later.

The support of the CPUSA had its roots in some similar actions it took during the 30s. In Alabama, it had set up councils of the unemployed to demand relief, and headed the defense of the Scottsboro boys (Zinn, 447-448). It's also important to see that the Communist relationship to black liberation stayed conflicted – for instance, in the expulsion of black radicals like Harry Haywood and Cyril Briggs. But organizing the unemployed, and defending African-Americans from false charges, was a major contribution of the Party before its decline in the late 50s.

Early 60s Organizing
The OurStory Project, created through the Bergen County Technical Schools, has put together an illuminating archive of civil-rights related news stories from the early 1960s.

The Congress on Racial Equality, CORE, was another important WWII-era anti-racist organization. Their tactics were pacifist but militant, and they soon spread across the country from their Chicago roots, and built up a large presence in New Jersey. Their Jersey City chapter, lead by Episcopal Reverend Castle, had a number of victories in 1963 against hiring discrimination (See video by Carroll). CORE was also active in Trenton, protesting for fairer housing policies statewide. News articles show that women lead much of this Trenton activity.

A New Jersey group called ANVIL is mentioned in one article, but I have not found any more information about them. They went on hunger strike in May of 1964. The purpose of their hunger strike, staged in front of the Governor's house, was to gain a meeting with the governor.

 Meanwhile, large groups of people were turning out to hear religious clergy who addressed racism. For instance, there was James XXX in Newark, a Muslim leader who drew a crowd of over 300, and a Baptist reverend, Leon Riddick, who spoke about the psychology of racism as a “slave psychosis.” Quakers helped break through 'redlining' by supporting black families moving into previously-segregated neighborhoods. Muslims protested segregation through cultural practices like refusing to salute flags and teaching their children to do the same – and successfully defended themselves in court when schools wanted to suspend their children for this.

In 1964, there were riots in Jersey City and Paterson. The Jersey City unrest started when police arrived to break up a drunken argument, and arrested two people. Other people attempted to unarrest them, and started fighting the police (Waldron). Eleven people were injured, and then a temporary state of normalcy resumed.

The Newark Rebellion
Racism in housing was a major point of anger in Newark. Weeks before the riots, 1,000 people had demonstrated against a new medical school being planned, which would displace many people from their homes. The school was the New Jersey College of Medicine and Dentistry. It was police violence, though, that finally sparked mass rioting in the city.

For an initial overview of the '67 riots, I looked at “Rebellion in Newark.” It was written immediately after the events, by SDS organizer Tom Hayden who had lived in Newark for several years. Hayden wrote that beforehand, civil rights activists had discussed “the mysteries of whether Newark would explode, rather than on what to do when Newark did.” But in retrospect, Life Magazine called it “the predictable insurrection." The book gives the following overview of the clashes: Riots in Detroit that same year left 43 people dead. Again, many people were killed by the police and National Guard, but others were killed by fires in buildings rioters looted and torched. It spurred on radical activity within the city's auto industry, and the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement came out of a major wildcat strike the next year. Other Revolutionary Union groups arose in Detroit, and their organizers formed theLeague of Revolutionary Black Workers. The LRBW would become an important actor, and would work together with black power groups in the northeast and around the country. In Newark, too, more militant organizations emerged after the rebellion.
 * Wednesday, July 12 – That evening, a taxi driver was pulled over and beaten by police, other drivers spread the news, and a crowd gathered outside the precinct where the man, John Smith, was taken. Activists from CORE, the Community Union Project and other groups were allowed into the jail, saw Smith in his cell. They organized a nonviolent rally outside the precinct, and spoke condemning the police. Crowds applauded them loudly but decided to take things further. Hayes Homes, a housing project just across the street, became a rallying point – people flooded out, besieged the precinct, others looted stores. Police beat random people. Cabbies, swiftly communicating by radio, organized a huge caravan to protect people from the police.
 * Thursday – Day started quietly. That evening picketers blocked the streets, handing out leaflets. Then, “a lady in white started punching out precinct windows with a stick.” More street battles and store looting that night. Police opened fire on the crowds. Four people killed. State officials realized they were losing control of the city.
 * Friday – National Guard rolled in, at the request of Governor Hughes. The deadliest day of the conflict, leaving eleven people dead. The city was under total military occupation.
 * Saturday – claimed another eight lives – all but two shot by police and Guardsmen.
 * Sunday – saw further chaos. Police and Guardsmen accidentally shot at one another, thinking the others were snipers. Once they realized what was happening, they proceeded more cautiously and the fear of killing each other lessened the shootings at civilians.
 * Monday – Fearing what would happen next, the Governor ordered the National Guard troops to leave, early in the morning. The unrest had been put down by overwhelming force, and the community was left to deal with the many sudden deaths.

Jersey City Black Panthers
In Jersey City, where CORE had confronted hiring discrimination, the Black Panther Party started a chapter, and found support from some of the same allies who had lead those earlier fights. The Jersey City chapter only lasted for two years. Pennsylvania local historian Brian Carroll put together an in-depth video lecture on its short and turbulent history.

The BPP chapter formed on August 15, 1968, in the city's Bergen-Lafayette ward. “It was the fourth one in New Jersey,” Carroll says, but besides Newark, it's not clear where the other two were. It was supported by Reverend Robert Castle, a CORE leader, who supplied resources through his church to help them get their footing.

In November, there was a drive-by shooting of the police precinct. Police said they had no leads no suspects. But the next day, an acid bomb exploded in the Newark BPP office, injuring an organizer, who blamed the police, calling it “obviously retaliation.” Then mayor and police chief came out and blamed BPP for shooting. In December, three Panthers were charged for the shooting, and also blamed for the acid-bombing. They were Isaiah Rowley, Victor Perez, and Charles Hicks – key local organizers.

The mayor used this as a chance to condemn an anti-poverty program that Rowley also worked with. Run by the federal government, it helped ex-offenders find jobs and reintegrate into society. The mayor had opposed it from day one.

On New Year's Day 1969, a pipebomb was thrown at the Jersey City police precinct. Newark councilman Anthony Imperiale called a convergence of white conservatives from around the East Coast, to talk about organizing vigilante groups against the Panthers. He already ran a white vigilante group under the front of a “First Aid Squad” in Newark's north ward. Meanwhile, the initiative supporting ex-offenders in Jersey City got shut down upon federal review.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in">It isn't clear what the Party's local work looked like at this time. Their organizing targeted on rat-infested housing, using rent strikes to press landlords for improvements. We know that they built some alliances with students at St. Peters College - 200 St. Peters students rallied for Rowley and the other jailed men, and Reverend Castle also spoke out in their defense.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in">There's little record of their programs overall, though – and the key government tactic of targeted arrests succeeded in drawing much time and money into lengthy legal defenses. Another attack, a firebombing, shook the chapter in 1970. The bombers were arrested- men from a right-wing religious sect in Union City, the Organization of God's People.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in">But the Black Panthers closed their Jersey City office in February of 1970. The violence and legal prosecution they faced had worn them down. They hoped that, merging with their comrades in Newark, they could make progress on the drug rehabilitation programs they'd wanted to focus on before.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in">In March, the trial of Rowley, Perez, and Hicks finally started. Two hundred considered jurors had been thrown out, by the judge or by lawyers charging bias on both sides – the final jury selected was all-white. The prosecution revolved around a car implicated in the shooting, and a machine gun found at a PATH station. The defense countered that the fingerprints in car didn't match, witnesses said defendants were in a pub at the time, and the shotgun in question had never been fired. Also, an initial police alert after the shooting warned officers to look out for four white suspects in a blue car. In July, the trial ended in mistrial. Rowley was released on bail, while the other two men remained in jail.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in">In September, the prosecutors agreed not to seek a new trial. Rowley and Perez plead to possession of explosives, and Hicks plead to possession of an illegal firearm. They were sentenced to “time served” – they'd already been in jail so long, that they were released, ending the case against them.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in">One episode after that, in the summer of 1971, targeted remaining militants in Jersey City. 93 Summit Ave – which had been the housing for ex-offenders when the federal antipoverty program was giving them assistance – had become a home for Black Panthers and other radicals. It had fortress-like security, with metal-barred windows, sandbags and cinder block reinforcements. There were posters of Mao outside. 300 police raided the building and arrested five men, charging them with trespassing and “operating a paramilitary organization." Isaiah Rowley was murdered in 1972, shot down by an unidentified gunman on the street one night.

Student Activism and the Welfare Rights Organization
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in">One first-hand account of post-riot activism comes from Newark lawyer Junius Williams. Williams talks about his involvement with the Newark Area Planning Association (NAPA) which he was the director of at the time. (See pages 10-11) “In 1968 we formed an alliance with the Welfare Rights Organization,” Williams says.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in">The Welfare Rights Organization (WRO) was started by CORE activists. It became predominantly a women's organization. Each chapter was fully autonomous, using the central organization as a source of support, while being free to decide its own actions on the ground. Its 1969 national gathering in Detroit drew 20,000 people (Bailis). In Philadelphia, the WRO had asked the Panthers for help, in providing security to black families moving in to a previously-segregated neighborhood, and the two groups collaborated on community programs (Jeffries).

In Newark, NAPA and the Black Organization of Students worked with the “Welfare Mamas,” as they called themselves, to stop the welfare offices from denying people assistance. A frequent tactic of the activists was the occupation of welfare offices.

“Of course the cops were called,” Williams wrote, “But cop-call pre-Rebellion and cop-call post-Rebellion were two different animals.” When confronting demonstrators post-Rebellion, the police no longer felt that they could arrest people with impunity.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in">“It is hard to get my children to realize that we were demonstrating or taking over some offices sometimes 2 or 3 times a week,” said Williams.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in">The Welfare Rights occupations helped prepare the Black Organization of Students to take over Conklin Hall in February 1969. NAPA supported the takeover of the Rutgers Newark building, and Williams remembers SDS helping as well. The medical school slated for construction was still a major point provoking them. Also, the BOS was protesting the low numbers of African-American faculty hired at the university. The students held the building for 72 hours. They chose it strategically because it contained the university switchboard, and they were able to broadcast their demands.

COINTELPRO targets Panthers and SDS
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in">The Black Panthers were present in Newark, but the most I've been able to find about them was that their office was firebombed twice, and that the FBI sent numerous vicious letters to them and Newark SDS, each posing as members from the opposite group, to drive a wedge between the Panthers and the students. (This is reported in The COINTELPRO Papers.) This was standard practice for the FBI program COINTELPRO, which aimed to monitor and sabotage social movements. That notwithstanding, SDS and the BPP had worked well together in Newark for a time, as Carroll reports. <p style="margin-bottom: 0in">The Cadre that was left in Jersey City continued to operate in protest against the Vietnam War and Police Brutality. The Newark Chapter after the bombing opened a new Office on Springfield avenue (presently the property of the Cineplex). Working with the Stella Wright Tenant Organization, creating the Newark Tenant Council (public housing), Newark Tenant Organization (private). While supporting Community Organizations, the Black Panther Speaks (Newspaper) still continued to be sold on the streets of Newark, Jersey City, Asbury Park, and Trenton. When the call for concentrating all Black Panther activities in Oakland California came out per orders from Huey Newton. Members evaporated into the community or went underground in support of the Black Liberation Army.

CFUN and the Modern Black Convention Movement
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in">An excellent account of black nationalism in Newark is given in A Nation Within A Nation, by  Komozi Woodard. <p style="margin-bottom: 0in">In 1967, a national Black Power Conference was held in Newark just weeks after riots. It was the second such conference – the first, the previous year, was in Detroit – while the third would be in Philadelphia.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in">Over the weekend of July 20, more than 1,000 delegates came to Newark – most from America, but some from Zimbabwe and Bermuda. Radical writer and agitator Amiri Baraka, who police had beaten nearly to death during the riots, played a major role. The national and international solidarity helped Newark residents start new activity in the aftermath of the violence.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in">One group Baraka lead was the Committee for a Unified Newark, or CFUN (Woodard). Many of its members were artists coming out of work with Spirit House, a fixture of the Black Arts movement. CFUN had a major cultural component – it hosted dances and talks encouraging a new community ethics, which included specifics like not drinking or smoking. But it also lead more concrete defense measures. Councilman Imperiale, who had rallied white vigilantes from many states against the Panthers, lead the powerful North Ward Citizens' Council, which had armed patrols that would harass black and Puerto Rican residents, and maintain segregation by intimidating them out of white Italian neighborhoods. CFUN formed a united front with Puerto Rican youth to fight back against this.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; font-style: normal">CFUN also developed an electoral strategy, and ran a slate of black and Puerto Rican candidates for city council. In the spring of 1970, they had a major victory: the election of Kenneth Gibson, Newark's first black mayor.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in">In the fall of 1970, simultaneous to the Valley Forge war reenactment, two major convergences were happening. One, just across the border in Philadelphia, was hosted by the Black Panthers: the Revolutionary People's Constitutional Convention (Jeffries). The other, in Atlanta, had Baraka as one of its main organizers (Hunter). This was the beginning of the Congress of African People.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in"> After the election of Gibson, Temple Kawaida formed. In 1971, with the CAP, it began organizing for reconstruction in Newark that would provide better housing, public facilities, health centers and parks to the poor in Newark. At the heart of their mission was Kawaida Towers, a 16-story housing development and community center. Gibson was initially an ally, but later went along with the establishment backlash against the project (Woodard).

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in">Imperiale's North Ward Citizens Council worked to block the construction. (Woodard) SDS, in turn, supported the construction – praising it as a much-needed source of affordable housing. In 1973, SDS demonstrated against the North Ward Council, at the proposed construction site of Kawaida Towers. But the Temple sponsoring the construction denounced SDS, who in turn called out the Temple for receiving Ford Foundation money (Protesters Confront...). I'm not sure whether the Temple simply wanted no outside white interference, or whether there was a more specific history of personal conflict between them and the student organizers.

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in">In the end, the towers weren't built. “We spent a million dollars to make a hole for the building. And then we spent $2 million to cover the hole. So it was a $3 million nothing, you know,” Baraka later said. A new building of homes for senior citizens came out of CAP's efforts, designed by surveying the elderly residents about what features they would like in a new residence. But the other projects were blocked by the city establishment, and CAP went into decline after that.