Breakdown in Newark
Brooks, Thomas R.
Carmine Casciano, a personable, young junior-high school teacher, acts as my guide to Newark's "predominantly white" North Ward. He is a district leader and president of the North Ward Young...
...As a black Newarkian 130 white households in Newark in 1966 was $6,752...
...The first Italian was elected, along with four Irish Americans, to the (then fiveman) City Council in 1941...
...I asked my companion, George Fontaine—director of the Newarkoffice of the Workers Defense League–A...
...As Fontaine put it, "Fire insurance gets canceled and that's it, baby...
...Look, there's crazy people all over...
...He is a district leader and president of the North Ward Young Democrats—immersed in the politics of his time and place...
...Adubato laughs, "That's how I got elected...
...Addonizio also integrated city departments...
...Despite the polarization BREAKDOWN IN NEWARK in the run-off, Gibson held an estimated 15 percent of the white vote...
...They're a feature of our life...
...Newark is not an affluent city, white or black.4 Its white residents are far from wealthy, and they do not control the business establishment...
...Another young man explains how he has to pick up his mother every night, who works downtown for an insurance company and is afraid of having her handbag snatched or worse...
...Addonizio concentrated on the white voters, and so he lost whatever support he might have had among black voters—and so Gibson was the winner: 55,097 to 43,086...
...136 THOMAS R. BROOKS jobs...
...The young, too, are at the center, not as a cause but a reason, of the battle for control of the schools and, ultimately, of the city itself...
...There are some 100,000 residents in the North Ward, a broad rise of land west of the Passaic River and roughly four miles from downtown Newark...
...The caption identified this as Black Newark with "the highest crime rate in the nation...
...but getting held up for loose change was a factor, too...
...You've got to remember," said Malafronte, "that many whites want peace, and Imperiale means trouble...
...7 There's some irony here, for in classic worker militancy, binding arbitration is often rejected because it gives too much authority to an outsider...
...The other parts of the Ward are Democratic...
...He is, I gather, the house hippie, and they are quite proud of him...
...But black female-headed households had a median income of $3,242 as compared with $5,926 for white female-headed households...
...Westbrooks, who wears a mod dashiki to council meetings, was an enthusiast, but the other two councilmen seemed to be less so...
...My guess is that they are not in a position to bridge racial hostilities in Newark, no matter how well they may do so in the plant...
...His father drives a garbage truck, and he has an uncle in the fire department...
...On the first day, 15 teachers were assaulted by a band of black youths...
...The white councilmen, with the exception of Villani, obviously wanted a way out that would save face all around...
...We're looking for an answer that will work," he says...
...The study estimated that there are 92 white males for every 100 white females in the population...
...Another photograph showed firegutted tenements along Springfield Avenue, assumed to be "remnants of the 1967 riots...
...Many of Newark's white workers are found in durable-goods manufacturing (19.6 percent) and in the wholesale-retail trades (16 percent...
...Yet whatever hope there is for a rejuvenated Newark lies somewhere in its confused politics...
...further on, we see Our Lady of Good Council, larger and older, and "the Irish Church...
...but it was also an attack by black nationalists and black wheelers and dealers against black integrationists and moderates...
...We do see some signs and he points to one, "If you see that sign [put up by the firm Jordan-Barish], you know they want to sell to blacks...
...The strike was not of the teachers' making...
...In the 1971 fall elections, Imperiale made a comeback, winning an assembly seat in the state legislature, as an Independent...
...for the reinstatement of 347 teachers who had been suspended by the Board of Education toward the end of the strike...
...Imperiale's is a politics of resentment...
...What trade union leaders have been saying all along—"you can't ignore blue- and white-collar workers" —now runs the risk of becoming an academic cliche—"you can't ignore the ethnics" —often without sufficient recognition of class differences...
...In the run-off election, Gibson concentrated on the black wards, South and Central, and on rallying the black vote...
...But to the west and south it is a different story...
...When I ask about reactions to Gibson's election, Casciano says, "People were frightened, afraid that all whites would suffer...
...Could people be using their name to start trouble...
...In 1972, Wallace may do much better in the North Ward, as Assemblyman Imperiale's November 1971 election suggests.1° But meanwhile Steve Adubato's group has secured its hold over the Democratic party in the Ward...
...Thirtytwoyear-old City Council President Louis B. Turco is a holdover from the old days and an Addonizio supporter...
...We end up at "Klub Rainier," just off Bloomfield Avenue, and find it unlocked and empty...
...Of the men, 46.1 percent are blue-collar workers-19.6 percent craftsmen, foremen, etc...
...He got slightly under 10 percent even though his chief supporter, Anthony Imperiale, won a council seat that year with his votes being three times the Wallace total...
...How many times has this happened...
...During the school strike, it seemed as if their fears were coming true...
...Of the ward councilmen, three are Italian and two are black...
...It was that, of course...
...the privately owned Colonnades where "the minimum rent is in the $200-a-month bracket...
...Congress...
...We linger outside, and various members of the club drift up...
...The union must protect its members from the indiscriminate dictates of the so-called community," said Carol Graves, president of the 6 The union demand for more aides to relieve teachers of nonprofessional tasks would providemore time for educating the young...
...This is a neighborhood of short blocks, tiny plots, and small frame houses—"$6,000–$7,000-a-year people...
...I was intrigued by the apparent unanimity of the Council on a range of financial and substantive matters...
...Though a recent study notes that immigrants from Europe, "mainly Portuguese and some Italian" still come to the city, there's scarcely a trace left of the 1938 Newark, with its 23,400 Irish, 36,900 Germans, 35,600 Poles, 65,000 Jews, and 85,1 These pictures are much more apposite than the Times captions allow...
...One crucial statistic, however, should be kept in mind: for households headed by a white male, the median income, in 1966 was $7,579 and for black males it was $6,892...
...as Casciano noses his car into a narrow, brick-paved street, he says, "Now we're in Imperiale City, basically a Republican area...
...I'm introduced to Steve George, Adubato's cousin...
...The good guys are prepared to shoot to kill to keep the peace, if Negroes come to burn our homes...
...We pass a modest, modem structure, the Church of the Immaculate Conception, called "the little Italian Church...
...A new medical center has been built...
...There are some 60-odd clubs, where the men eat, drink, and watch sports on TV...
...A 132 black youth, conservatively dressed and wellmannered, comes up the street, and someone giggles, "Here comes the next president of the club...
...Of Newark's working white females and white males 9 and 11 percent, respectively, are in service occupations...
...Street Corner Society, W. F. Whyte's earlier study, remarked on the propensity of some Italians to become Republicans in reaction to the Irish domination of city politics...
...Steve Adubato told the women, "We're the new niggers in our society," and the TV interviewer's face clearly showed that he wished he'd caught that for his show...
...To get the necessary redistricting, the interested black groups are perfectly willing to work with the Republicans, who are eager for redistricting, which would also probably guarantee a Republican victory in the Essex County suburbs...
...Horrific rumors circulate widely, with apparent spontaneity and almost instantaneously...
...The losing Democrat came in third with 11,018 votes—as against8,247 and 7,375 votes for the Republican contestants...
...I got no respect for them," he tells us, "with all that talk about blacks and Puerto Ricans...
...I don't think I need spell out further the kind of struggle that appears to be in the offing...
...Hardly a dissenting vote or voice was raised over quite sizable expenditures of money and such questions as an anti-block-busting ordinance...
...Newark has what the textbooks call a strong mayor/council government...
...In 1967, according to the Rutgers study, 46.7 percent of Newark's blacks were 15 years of age and under as against only 23.3 percent of whites...
...The goodly number of teachers in Adubato's group first gained political experience in the American Federation of Teachers' Newark Local...
...his presence on the City Council served to inflame the passions of Newark, not to calm them...
...The city's predominant remaining white group is Italian American...
...BREAKDOWN IN NEWARK 300 Italians...
...There was a house for sale right next door," a buxom brunette breaks in, and I got at least five phone calls from JordanBarish asking, `Aren't you selling your house...
...They're holding up the list," he tells me, "because of the PRs and the colored...
...He had the support of the Leroi Jones-organized Black and Puerto Rican Convention...
...The black head of Newark's Urban Coalition lives in Maplewood...
...Thirteen percent of its white families are below the poverty line ($3,000 a year...
...The latter were whiteswho lived outside Newark, which perhaps explainsthe black councilmen's opposition...
...It consists of nine members, four elected at-large, and five in the wards...
...BREAKDOWN IN NEWARK local union, who served 41 days of a sixmonth jail sentence for strike activities...
...in 1970 at 375,00...
...asks one woman...
...The population is an estimated 70-75 percent white, with a sizable black and Spanish-speaking minority...
...We think of Newark as dominantly black...
...The Newark Local of the American Federation of Teachers was forced out on strike because the Board of Education refused to renew two key contract provisions, which should have been normal procedure...
...One would have expected, for example, in view of Steve Adubato's successful insurgency against the Addonizio machine, some overtures from City Hall...
...We all turn, and she continues, "We got a call, `Aren't you afraid of blacks next door?' I said, `No, it doesn't scare me at all.' Puerto Ricans did buy that house, and you know something...
...The caption quoted Cook: "Bamberger's still there...
...Puerto Ricans are the largest single group moving into the Ward but, I am told, "a lot of the home-buying is done by Cubans...
...And those young militants— followers of Leroi Jones—obviously believed that their mere presence and superior number in the gallery entitled them to a victory on the issue...
...Their children and grandchildren presumably live in the middle- and working-class suburbs outside Newark...
...Newark has the largest per capita public housing program in the country...
...To the tensions of race one must add those of class and age...
...Liberals have programmed a black agenda and have not directed themselves to low-income, first- and second-generation white Americans...
...Of the female residents, 78.2 percent work in Newark and 21.8 percent outside the city...
...Imperiale's home, I am told by Casciano, is in the North Ward's black neighborhood...
...Most working women-62.5 percent—are white-collar and 41 percent of these clerical—with 5.8 percent in sales, 7.3 percent working as managers, officials, and proprietors...
...They're the nicest neighbors I ever had...
...My kid can't walk around [the junior high school] with 750 in his pocket...
...I was struck by the ire the young militants vented against the council clerk—a white, elderly, gray-haired, and parliamentarian gentleman...
...Fontaine smiled and told me, "No, it wasn't the riot, just a fire...
...AddoniTHOMAS R. BROOKS zio saw to it that new campuses were built for the Newark College of Engineering (Mayor Gibson is a graduate), for Rutgers in Newark, and for the Essex County Community College...
...The Gibson slate carried along only two of his six running mates...
...The strike ended in mid-April on the basis of a compromise fashioned by Mayor Gibson...
...The Italians of Newark are likely to be again castigated as racists, blue-collar Wallaceites, hard hats, and ethnics...
...What is more alarming is the erosion of black/white relations within the Democratic party, which is, after all, an important integrated institution...
...Nearly half of the whites (44.5 percent), according to the Rutgers' study, have always resided in Newark, while 19.5 percent come from other New Jersey points, and 16 percent from New York, Pennsylvania, or New England, and 15.6 percent are immigrants...
...But this has not happened as far as I can determine...
...Poor education is pushing a lot of people out of the city...
...Then, the blow-up over the proposed new Malcolm X Boulevard...
...What this means shows up in the difference between the black household median income of $3,580 and that of whites at $7,000 a year...
...Somedwellings were burned in 1967, mostly incidentalto the destruction of business establishments...
...They always need firemen, don't they...
...Roughly 75 percent of white families in the city earned under $10,000 a year...
...for an instant the black Newark of Imamu Baraka faced the Newark of the North Ward, and I shuddered...
...We've got to build a coalition whose objective is to build change...
...There is talk in the North Ward of separation from Newark, of a petition to recall the present form of government for an at-large councilmanic system on the theory and possibility that this will guarantee a white majority at City Hall at least for a time, and Steve Adubato talks of a tax boycott...
...BREAKDOWN IN NEWARK How does one record the urban litany...
...For other reasons see Richard Krickus's article, p. 107...
...They keep giving the exam and they can't pass...
...It is a feeling of some standing...
...It was a reporter's nightmare—snatches of conversation in this corner and a good quote heard from the other side of the room...
...Yet, freeing the teacher of this burden requires more aides—which cost money...
...The white demand for more police veers on a call for control of "them...
...He had the support of Irvine Turner, a black city councilman of the Central Ward, elected in 1953, and a power in his own right...
...Black militants split on the issue...
...West went down with Addonizio in the 1970 election...
...The settlement called for "no reprisals...
...City Council elections are nonpartisan, but understandably the Democrats are the power...
...In the course of all this, the Council got into one of those parliamentary hassles that is the despair of even the most initiated...
...Yet, I heard grumblings about the Irish domination of the police and fire departments...
...about 37 percent are in the age bracket 25-54, roughly 13 percent 16-24 years old, and 22 percent 15 or under...
...Prudential as the major insurance company in Newark, therefore, bears some responsibility for boardedup housing...
...And Adubato, in one breath, told me, "I'm like Imperiale, the Church is something we don't knock, but the Irish run the whole show...
...The strike was marked by sporadic violence from the start...
...Imperiale led a field of seven candidates in District 11-B, which consists of Newark's North and West Wards...
...Back in 1962, Addonizio, ex-quarterback and World-War-II hero, and six-time liberal congressman, pulled together a coalition of dissident Democrats, liberals, labor people, blacks, and Italians to wrest City Hall from another ward-heeling machine...
...The Catholic high school lets out as we drive by, and a quick look at young faces confirms Casciano's observation, "it's mostly white...
...More remarks in this vein, sotto voce, as the youngster passes by...
...I don't think it's their fault," Adubato and I go off for a round of beer...
...This suggests that when it comes to governing a city, politicians, black or white, do not always act along racial lines...
...Addonizio might have won again if it had not been for his arrest and subsequent conviction on charges involving corruption...
...Yet, Newark is not a city of homeowners...
...so did Turner...
...And there are none in two of the City's key antipoverty agencies, the United Community Corporation and the Model Cities program...
...One even suggested that it was important to find out the sentiments of those who lived on or owned businesses on the Avenue (or new boulevard), a proposition greeted with scorn by a sizable group of young black citizens who were present...
...I've got a lot of cousins...
...Imperiale lost his 1970 bid for the mayoralty and, although he ran well ahead in his own ward, lost in June 1971 a sortie aimed at the North Ward's Democratic party leadership...
...The median income of 2 Blacks, too, move out as their incomes rise...
...But and turned down two of his appointments to the Newark Parking Authority...
...At present, the two congressional districts--each consisting of suburban and city areas—return to Congress, with unfailing regularity, two liberals who are both Italian and prolabor...
...He once described his followers as "the-good guys," and likened Newark to "a town of the old West...
...Newark, incidentally, is losing population: in 1950 it stood at 438,776...
...Half the white males over 25 have not completed high school, but 25.2 percent of employed white males over 16 have "some college or more...
...One photo showed Broad Street with the new, gleaming Prudential Insurance Company headquarters in the background...
...Newark just got the new math last year...
...Mayor Gibson unfortunately also has not developed a working organization...
...In the words of the s This last point is still tied up in the courts on appeal...
...9 The May night I visited the City Council 9 Yet, the three black members of the City Council refused in November 1971 to support Mayor Gibson's request for two new municipal executive posts was the occasion of a racial fallout over the proposed renaming of Belmont Avenue as Malcolm X Boulevard...
...8.4 percent are professional, technical, and kindred workers...
...My girlfriend can't sell her house fast enough," says a self-possessed matron...
...6 Unhappily, "them" increasingly means the blacks...
...I want to show you the clubs," he tells me...
...Dennis Westbrooks, the youngest city councilman at age 31...
...And it is true, in the end the sticky fingers of corruption got him...
...A quarter of the city's whites are 55 and over, a group that looms large among victims...
...Newark is two cities, and neither one is a happy one...
...There is a "proj ect," with its load of welfare cases...
...Adubato is accomplishing just this, admittedly on a small scale, in his North Ward alliance of Italian Americans and middle-class blacks...
...If there's one language teacher, he goes to the other side of town...
...Ohrbach's still there...
...Imperiale first gained national attention by winning a seat on the Newark City Council in a white backlash that followed the 1967 riots...
...but none I visited had expresso machines, which still dominate similar clubs in the Little Italys of Boston and New York...
...Imperiale carried the North Ward but trailed third to Addonizio's second...
...An exchange: The wife of a fireman complains, "When the engines get there [to a fire in the Central Ward], people start shoving and pushing the firemen...
...I exaggerate, but not by much, when I say that there are moments, especially talking to older people, when it is not clear whether "them," directed at City Hall, means the blacks or the Irish...
...He also plans to pressure Mayor Gibson into appointing more Italians in city jobs, especially in the anti-poverty agencies...
...Four white councilmen, incidentally, backed the mayor on thenew appointments and the creation of the newposts...
...In describing white Newark I have tried to keep black/white comparisons to a minimum...
...The things I've taught my children are being torn apart down there [at Barringer High School...
...Newark's property tax is the second highest among the country's major cities and such a boycott aimed at eliciting better services from the city might be popular though unworkable...
...There are 42 children in my son's fourthgrade class...
...The arbitration clause, black militants charged, gave union leaders too much power in setting school policy...
...the whites fought the adoption of a tax package that included a regressive 1 percent sales tax to be added to the State's 5 percent...
...The current discovery of ethnic America is something of a fad, as was that of black America, and it equally obscures the class character of our society...
...We have a bottle of Manhattan Special, a coffee soda Adubato wants me to try...
...He's 32, been out of work for three months, and is waiting "to get on the fire department...
...This, he explained, is because "the black kids are two years older to begin with...
...It is fifth in the nation in the amount of federal funds received for urban renewal purposes...
...Without binding arbitration, a contract with this board is just a worthless piece of paper...
...No one union dominates or looms large on the scene as, say, the UAW does in Detroit...
...For a time, Addonizio was a good mayor as mayors go...
...It was Ralph Villani, who is currently a councilman-atlarge...
...You can't tell what people are going to be like...
...The black council members sided with the Mayor...
...They were not all Italian as it happens...
...Paul's Centenary Methodist Church five young women to discuss the aftermath of the Newark teachers' strike for a TV special...
...The Mayor has no real political links with the minority white community, nor, despite gestures in that direction, with the emerging, smaller minority of the city's Spanish-speaking citizens...
...There were hidden eddies, even among the black councilmen...
...Imperiale was a Republican, which may explain the failure of his 1971 invasion...
...That's new...
...Yet unions otherwise do not play much of a role in North Ward politics...
...It's all that he says it is: good...
...He's doing the same thing...
...someone asks...
...Someone mentions that "Eddie Hotdog's brother got shot in the hand by a cop (I never did get the details straight), and this reminds a policeman of a shooting the previous night...
...So we end up with immobilization where we need resolute action for the sake of everyone's peace and comfort...
...He is the leader of a liberal-labor coalition, which includes Joel R. Jacobson of the United Automobile Workers, battling the entrenched Essex County Democratic machine...
...Nonetheless, the Council is torn along racial lines, a rift exacerbated by Mayor Gibson's acceptance—he had little choice—of a tax package approved by a Republican governor and a Republican-dominated state legislature...
...These provisions were to provide binding arbitration of unresolved grievances, and the teachers' relief from such nonprofessional chores as patrolling of hallways and cafeterias...
...Current conventional wisdom dictates the condemnation of Mayor Hugh J. Addonizio as a racist, old-line, machine politician...
...As we break up, the wife of the fireman says, "What makes you think I'm blaming them...
...Money was not an issue in the bargaining that preceded the strike...
...The North Ward feels cut-off from the city, even though many of its residents hold city jobs...
...He has passed the fire examination and is on the list...
...Steve Adubato's great-uncle is still something of a hero in the North Ward as THOMAS R. BROOKS the first Italian to get on the police force back around World War I. He was killed collaring a prohibition-era hood in a New York City fleabag...
...Clearly, there is missing in Newark that old political device, the balanced ticket...
...In the first electoral round of 1970, chiefly because of the corruption issue, Gibson carried all but the North Ward, leading a slate of six candidates...
...When the Council majority adopted a motion asking the clerk to prepare a report on the feasibility of the name change, it was roundly booed and the youths shouted, "We're going to change it ourselves...
...Three of the council members at large are Italian and one is black...
...Blacks have got all these special programs to help them get to college, or to rehabilitate their houses and help them find 10 Each assembly district in New Jersey elects two assemblymen...
...The Census Bureau gave the city's black population in 1970 as 54.2 percent...
...In the North Ward, as in other Italian neighborhoods in American cities, Italian backyards are often devoted to a small patch of tomatoes, peppers, perhaps a few zucchini, and a grape arbor...
...Two years ago I was walking through the blocks off Springfield Avenue, heart of the 1967 riot scene...
...The way it's around here," he added, "Republican and Democrat don't mean much any more...
...It has, after all, black andwhite adherents and could conceivably cement bands of brotherhood in a city torn by racism...
...Thirty percent of Newark's population receives some form of welfare assistance...
...He complains that when white liberals talk about the "priority issues"—housing, unemployment, tax inequities, and education—"they automatically focus on blacks...
...I don't know if he heard but he walks straight on and keeps looking straight ahead...
...Things are really polarized now...
...The unemployment rate in Newark, as of April 1971, was 14.2 percent, with 23,300 jobless out of a work force of 163,800...
...Another exchange: "Leroi Jones is teaching them to stick with their own people...
...17.8 percent are operatives and the like, and 8.7 percent are nonfarm laborers...
...Teachers' car windows were smashed and car tires slashed...
...etc...
...therefore, blacks who otherwise would join in such a call hold back...
...It was expected in 1968 that the city would give George Wallace 15-20 percent of its vote...
...Surprisingly, Adubato has remained aloof from the Turco/Jacobson alliance, reflecting perhaps a temporary expediency...
...That's a sizable bulge of young blacks coming up through the school system and operating out on the streets...
...it stipulated that elementary-school teachers were to escort students to the school front door, and that junior-high teachers were to monitor corridors between classes...
...To give but one illustration: the parents, most non-Catholic and nearly all black, of the children at St...
...We are going to get colleges and corporations to give us special help the way they do for disadvantaged blacks," Adubato says...
...Frank Megaro, the city councilman from the North Ward and a Democrat, won the other seat with 12,604 votes...
...No paese here," Adubato says...
...The 11-week school strike limns Newark's tragic predicament...
...The North Ward is restless, Adubato argues, "because there is no delivery system for whites...
...No white kids fight back...
...There are not as many For Sale signs as I was led to expect by newspaper and downtown accounts...
...Business Newark does $3.5 billion worth of retail trade annually...
...We've been all year without a remedial reading teacher...
...Under 10 percent of all white workers in Newark are in construction (5.6 percent), transportation, communications, public utilities (8 percent), and government (7 percent...
...i.e., the Panthers supported the union...
...A woman in a purple dress announces, "My house is not up for sale...
...A three-man panel—a professional arbitrator, a teacher, and a principal— were to arbitrate grievances...
...2 No one, as far as I know, has recorded the ethnic migration out of Newark nor located exactly those who stayed, but a report of the Newark office of the American Jewish Committee estimates that "approximately 6,000 Jews are left" in the city...
...There also are some Italian flags and decals...
...Two other Independents polled roughly 3,000 each...
...According to Manpower Director Harry L. Wheeler, the black male unemployment rate of those over 16 and under 26 is 24-27 percent while among the Spanish—speaking it approaches 34 percent...
...With the exception of the Italians, the remaining whites in the city are by and large elderly...
...they seemed to feel that he was the enemy...
...There's a "White Newark" and a "Black Newark"—the pressure of polarization showed in the captions of two photographs illustrating Fred J. Cook's article on Newark and Mayor Gibson in the July 25, 1971 New York Times Magazine...
...We're basically Italian with a few Irish and mixed," Casciano explains as we drive through a neighborhood of the comfortably well-off—of "judges, lawyers, doctors, professionals"— and on to another with modest, asphalt-sided, single-family houses—of "mostly factory workers...
...BREAKDOWN IN NEWARK...
...Steve Adubato (see Krickus, p. 107), former teacher, now chairman of the North Ward Democratic party, and chairman of Rutgers (Newark) Project Dislocated Ethnic Groups, brought together in April 1971 at St...
...Any new agenda must include both groups...
...Carmine Casciano, a personable, young junior-high school teacher, acts as my guide to Newark's "predominantly white" North Ward...
...This kid [a mugger shot by a patrolman] is bleeding in the street while we wait for the ambulance...
...There are American flags out in front of the houses, and flag decals decorate automobile windows...
...Those vacated buildings one sees in profusionthroughout the heart of the Central Ward were emptied by fire...
...Charles Borromeo parochial school, in the predominantly black South Ward, last summer raised $4,000 at a card party, $20-a-week at school parking lot barbecues, and $111,000 from a drive to keep the school from closing for financial reasons.' Newark, with 375,000 souls, is the first American city, after Washington, D.C., to attain a black majority...
...Listening to this group, you get a sense of what was bothering these white parents...
...Harry L. Wheeler, Newark's director of manpower, estimates that 62 percent of Newark is black and 11 percent of Spanish background, leaving 27-35 percent of the city white...
...But, in terms of eligible voters, the city is much more evenly divided: 47 percent of the vote is white, 45 percent black...
...Our kids are not getting to college...
...Calvin West, an Addonizio–Turner protege, was the first black elected on a city-wide basis, becoming a city council member in 1966...
...Board President Jesse L. Jacob prolonged the strike—"If this be the year of attrition, then let it be...
...Another states: "I don't understand why colored people call firemen...
...As this group moves into its late teens and early twenties, it faces a high rate of unemployment (37.8 percent for those between 16 and 19) and a high rate of crime...
...They are now engaged in building their base, after having opened the North Ward Educational and Cultural Center with financial aid from Rutgers and the National Center for Urban Ethnic Affairs in 1971...
...Mayor Gibson has said that he is the mayor of all the people, and he has made white appointments— but he has very few Italians on his staff...
...Humphrey carried the city and the North Ward, though his North Ward total was not greater than the combined Nixon-Wallace vote there...
...Imperiale is just as bad...
...More women than men are in the professions (18.1 percent female against 12.7 percent male), and more women than men are in finance, real estate, and insurance (14.8 percent female as against 6.2 percent males...
...We're hurting...
...And, reminiscent of Imamu Baraka, "All we want is equity...
...Mostly, we talk about the great meal Steve George is going to prepare for Friday...
...Nonwhite families with annual incomes of $3,000 or less constitute 27 percent of nonwhite families in Newark, but only 13 percent in suburban East Orange...
...Several members of the School Board were threatened, and shots were fired into the home of one member...
...In the first election, with a smaller turnout, Gibson received 37,859 votes, to Addonizio's 18,212, and Imperiale's 13,978, most of which (7,656) came from the North Ward...
...Moreover, hallway and cafeteria patrol often places the teacher ina disciplinary role with bad carryovers to the classroom...
...As I described earlier, the North Ward is made up of a series of neighborhoods consisting largely of one- or two-family homes, presumably owner-occupied...
...We first pass through tree-lined streets, a neighborhood of substantial homes and lawns, and this year's cars parked in the driveways...
...THOMAS R. BROOKS 11.6 percent as professionals and technicians, 9.6 percent as clerical workers, and 5.9 percent in sales...
...Much has been written about Gibson as the black saviour of Newark, but the City Council is more representative of Newark than Mayor Gibson...
...A majority of white males (61.7 percent) work in the city, while nearly 40 percent travel outside to jobs...
...He won as an Independentwith 13,750 votes...
...The Local was fined a crippling $270,000 by the courts, to be paid by a 10 percent deduction from salaries...
...so did Mayor Gibson and Coordinator for the United Community Corporation Earl Harris, who unseated West...
...Westbrooks, a native of Homestead, Pennsylvania, won his reputation as a militant and a substantial bloc of votes as director of a community action program at the Scudder Houses, a public housing project, where he led a sucessful rent strike...
...I discussed Imperiale with Don Malafronte, one of the most knowledgeable men about New ark and a former mayoral aide, both to Hugh J. Addonizio and later to Kenneth A. Gibson...
...This makes governing the city difficult, and explains why it took the Mayor so long to resolve the school strike...
...The blacks of Newark want a black congressman, and there is pressure from black activists and politicians elsewhere who want to build up the number of blacks in the U.S...
...Paradoxically, despite those sociologists who see the conflict between the almosthaves (or have-nots) and the most recent haves as the most severe, the upwardly mobile blacks of Newark and the recently arrived whites have much in common—the same need for more police protection, for better schools, and other demands—enough to cement a coalition...
...now it's Italian and black...
...The members are younger men, Adubato's generation...
...The latter was defeated by the Rev...
...A number of the larger unions in Newark—the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union and the International Union of Electrical Workers, to name two— have large black memberships in the city and comparatively few whites...
...This creates continuing, crucial tension 5 From a more analytical source I gather that thismay be why the Church has not played a morepositive role in Newark...
...The ambulance he drives, as a service to his neighborhood and for part of his living, was parked outside the storefront that houses his Karate Club and the headquarters of the North Ward Citizens' Association...
...Black Newark, in truth, is a world of great variety...
...8 The strike was widely misinterpreted as solely a black/white confrontation...
...in 1960 at 405,220...
...Jacob opposed the settlement, and he attempted to blow up an incident where a handful of black parents sought to prevent the return of white teachers in several schools into a breakdown of tenuously established relations...
...The system, to them so clearly represented by the elderly clerk, of course does not work that way nor should it...
...I take it as evidence of desperation...
...Imperiale's North Ward vote clearly went to Addonizio, but Gibson raised his vote there from 4,265 in the first, to 7,405 in the second election...
...It never enters his head that the holdup might be financial...
...At Broadway," says Adubato, he was a water boy...
...This bespeaks, it seems, a weakness within the city...
...The crowd gets nasty, you know, muttering about `pigs' and `racist cops.' Then someone takes a closer look and when they see he's not black, they all melt away...
...In the face of a $50-million budget gap a compromise was worked out, but not without bitterness...
...At one, I'm introduced to an "old guy," a Sicilian who tells me, "I hate 'em...
...The AFT is one of the few truly integrated organizations of any power or significance in Newark, and some black extremists were out to prove that reason and racial integration cannot work...
...a What put the teachers' backs up was an incident in November, when a black parents' group forced the summary transfer of three white teachers who had refused extra-professional chores not covered under the terms of the then existing contract...
...But not altogether...
...He subsequently served as mayor from 1949 to 1953, and the Italians have played a key role in city politics ever since...
...134 old Negro spiritual, `Free at last, praise God Almighty, free at last...
...This is a record that most mayors would be proud of...
...Well, it's a different story in the North Ward, too, and there white Newark is hardly Business Newark...
...In the Newark area, local unions are organized into a county council rather than into a city council as in New York and other major cities...
...Imperiale City" is named for State Assemblyman Anthony Imperiale, elected in November 1971 on an Independent ticket...
...Barringer, a prestigious public high school located in the North Ward, is "mixed," and a local junior high seems so, too...
...The strength of the Republican party is here in Forest Hills," Casciano tells me...
...and Academy Spires, "all black, and most of them vote Democratic...
...We white ethnics don't get any of these things...
...Afterwards, they kept on talking as the technicians packed up...
...White teachers, it was said, did not live in Newark (which is not true—for perhaps even more white teachers do than black teachers...
...But that is not the whole story...
...4 Black Newark is poorer...
...The guys who belong, I am told, are policemen, schoolteachers, factory workers, and "one guy who lives here...
...During the tense aftermath of the riot, Imperiale sat at one end of a "hot line" while Imamu Baraka (Leroi Jones) sat at the other—and neither had reconciliation in mind...
...He also wants to get married, which gives bite to his grievance...
...In Beyond the Melting Pot, their study of New York City, Nathan Glazer and Patrick Moynihan found that Italian neighborhoods were more likely to have a range of generations living in the same brownstone or city block than old Irish, Jewish, or other ethnic neighborhoods...
...Slightly over one-quarter of Newark's whites are 55 years of age or older...
...By the end of the school year, an uneasy peace settled over Newark...
...Six of these were newly elected, including the three black members...
...The four blacks and one Puerto Rican majority on the Board, as against the four whites, held that the teachers' unwillingness to perform these tasks was "insensitive to the needs of black children...
...8 These and subsequent data are from Jack Chernick, Bernard P. Indik, and George Sternlieb, "Newark, New Jersey: Population and Labor Force, Spring 1967," a report, published by the Rutgers Institute of Management and Labor Relations...
...Aggressive crime is much on people's minds...
...If they want their places burned down, let 'em burn...
...One of their tactics was a crude attempt to drive white teachers out of the system...
...in the center city...
...the Council, however, controls the purse...
...White male workers (43.4 percent) are more evenly distributed among the white-collar occupations, with 16.3 percent working as managers, etc., told me, "Once they get to the doctor/lawyer class, they usually move out...
...Adubato says his boy left the public junior-high to attend a Catholic school because there were no sports...
...PhilipRandolph Joint Apprenticeship Program—if anear-block-long, gutted row of brick houses hadbeen burned out in the riot...
...74 percent of it's white and 87 percent of it's black families live in rental housing...
...People want to sell," Casciano tells me, "but they can't get a decent price...
...The majority live in the South Ward (Weequahic Section) and the balance in the West Ward (Ivy Hill section...
Vol. 19 • January 1972 • No. 1
