1967 — July 12-17 (esp. 13th), Police Violence and Racial Rioting, Newark, NJ –23-26

–26 Governor’s Select Commission on Civil Disorders. Report for Action…, Feb 1968, 138.
Race
–24 black
— 2 white
Cause
–23 gunshot wounds
— 1 heart attack (frightened woman with heart condition, in heavy gunfire area)
— 1 vehicular related
— 1 drug overdose [?]
[– 1 policeman killed by mob in nearby Plainfield; not counted amongst the 26]
–26 Parks, Brad. “Crossroads Pt. 2: 5 days that changed a city.” NJ.com, 7-9-2011.
–26 Porambo, Ronald. No Cause for Indictment: An Autopsy of Newark. Melville House, 2007.
–26 Wikipedia. “1967 Newark riots.” 8-3-2012 modification.
–25 Blanchard tally – haven’t been able to determine why the drug overdose was riot-attributed
–23 Brown, Richard Maxwell (Ed.). American Violence. 1970, p. 152.
–21 blacks
— 2 whites
–23 Herman, Max. “Newark (New Jersey) Riot of 1967,” p. 447 in Rucker/Upton, 2007 (V2).
–23 Herman, Max, Ph.D. “Events.” Newark Riots-1967. www.67riots.rutgers.edu
–23 National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. Report of the National…, 1968, p. 69.
— 1 white detective
— 1 white fireman
–21 blacks
–6 women
–2 children
–1 elderly man (Isaac Harrison, 73)
Deaths caused by Local and State Police and State National Guard shootings:
— ~19 Herman, Max. “Victims of the 1967 Newark Riot.” Newark Riots – 1967.

Narrative Information

Governor’s Commission: “The manner in which the homicides occurred raises serious questions about riot-control procedures. A review of the testimony of law enforcement officials who were responsible for conducting operations during the riot yields ample evidence that there was a good deal of indiscriminate shooting.” (p. 140)

“According to a special report prepared on October 24 by the Newark Police Department on the “Dead and Injured During the July, 1967, Riot,” 10 of the people shot were by Newark police forces-seven justifiably, and three accidentally. The report further states that a policeman and a fire captain were shot by snipers and that II other deaths from shooting were from undetermined sources. The location of death, the number of wounds, the manner in which the wounds were afflicted all raise grave doubts about the circumstances under which many of these people died.” (p. 141)
Findings

“1. The Newark City Administration did not adequately realize the bitterness in important sectors of the Negro community over the Administration’s policies and conduct in the medical school and Parker-Callaghan controversies. The Administration did not seem to understand that political support by large numbers of Negroes in past municipal elections was not a guarantee against disaffection and disappointment over specific issues of direct and deep interest to Negroes. This reflects a serious lack of communication between established authority and the black community, which is one of the prime ills of Newark.

“2. There was virtually a complete breakdown in the relations between the police and the Negro community prior to the disorders, and there is no evidence that there has been any improvement since July. Distrust, resentment and bitterness were at a high level on both sides, and there was no evidence of any significant improvement in this vital area when the Commission ended its hearings late in 1967.

“3. Pre-riot planning by the Newark Police Department was inadequate. The department did not have sufficient resources for riot control, and it had not prepared a plan of operations for coping with the possibility of large-scale disorders.

“4. Those who passed out leaflets and called for a rally on the evening of Thursday, July 13, in front of the Fourth Precinct, following the night of the Smith arrest, showed poor judgment. In the light of the high state of tension in the community, a rally was far more likely to lead to disorder than to nonviolent protest.

“5. The Administration of the City of Newark was too hesitant to request State Police assistance, despite the views of high officers in the Newark Police Department that such aid was needed. Had aid been requested earlier, the rioting might have been contained more quickly and effectively….
….

“8. The amount of ammunition expended by police forces was out of all proportion to the mission assigned to them. All police forces lacked an adequate system of ammunition control. No proper procedures had been established for dispensing and accounting for the expenditure of ammunition. The use of personal weapons by members of the Newark Police Department created special problems in this area and should be condemned.

“9. The technique of employing heavy return fire at suspected sniper locations proved tragic and costly….

“11. There is evidence of prejudice against Negroes during the riot on the part of various police and National Guard elements. This resulted in the use of excessive and unjustified force and other abuses against Negro citizens.

“12. The damage caused within a few hours early Sunday morning, July 16, to a large number of stores marked with ‘Soul’ signs to depict non-white ownership and located in a limited area reflects a pattern of police action for which there is no possible justification. Testimony strongly suggests that State Police elements were mainly responsible with some participation by National Guardsmen. These raids resulted in personal suffering and economic damage to innocent small businessmen and property owners who have a stake in law and order and who had not participated in any unlawful act. It embittered the Negro community as a whole at a time when the disorders had begun to ebb….” (pp. 143-144.) (Governor’s Select Commission on Civil Disorders. Report for Action: An Investigation Into the Causes and Events of the 1967 Newark Race Riots (Hughes Commission Report). Feb 1968.)

Herman (Rucker/Upton): “The Newark (New Jersey) Riot of 1967 pitted residents of the city’s predominantly black neighborhoods against mostly white police and military forces. After five days of unrest, which ranged from July 12 through July 17, 1967, 23 people were dead, over 700 people were injured, and approximately 1,500 people were arrested. After the Los Angeles (California) Riot of 1965 (also known as the Watts riot) and the Detroit (Michigan) Riot of 1967, the 1967 Newark riot was the most severe episode of urban unrest to take place in the United States during the 1960s…While a majority of white respondents and some African Americans label the Newark event a riot, some black and white political activists refer to it as a rebellion or uprising. Since the majority of victims were killed or injured by the police and military rather than by civilians of the opposite race, it might be a misnomer to call this even a race riot….” (Herman, Max. “Newark (New Jersey) Riot of 1967,” pp. 447-452 in Rucker, Walter C. and James N. Upton (Eds.). Encyclopedia of American Race Riots (Vol. 2 of 2). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2007.)

Herman (Rutgers): “The Newark Riot of 1967 began with the arrest of a cab driver named John Smith, who allegedly drove around a double-parked police car at the corner of 7th St. and 15th Avenue. He was subsequently stopped, interrogated, arrested and transported to the 4th precinct headquarters, during which time he was severely beaten by the arresting officers. As news of the arrest spread, a crowd began to assemble in front of the precinct house, located directly across from a high-rise public housing project. When the police allowed a small group of civil rights leaders to visit the prisoner, they demanded that Mr. Smith be taken to a hospital. Emerging from the building, these civil rights leaders begged the crowd to stay calm, but they were shouted down. Rumor spread that John Smith had died in police custody, despite the fact he had been taken out the back entrance and transported to a local hospital. Soon a volley of bricks and bottles was launched at the precinct house and police stormed out to confront the assembly. As the crowd dispersed they began to break into stores on the nearby commercial thoroughfares. Eventually violence spread from the predominantly black neighborhoods of Newark’s Central Ward to Downtown Newark, and the New Jersey State Police were mobilized. Within 48 hours, National Guard troops entered the city. With the arrival of these troops the level of violence intensified. At the conclusion of six days of rioting 23 people lay dead, 725 people were injured and close to 1500 people had been arrested.

Causes of the Riot

“A variety of factors contributed to the Newark Riot, including police brutality, political exclusion of blacks from city government, urban renewal, inadequate housing, unemployment, poverty, and rapid change in the racial composition of neighborhoods.

“Police-Community Relations

“For residents of Newark’s predominantly black Central Ward, the police were a persistent, if not entirely welcome presence. Patrolmen, who were mostly of Irish and Italian descent routinely stopped and questioned black youths with or without provocation. During the decade preceding the riot, several high profile cases of police brutality against young black men were reported, some resulting in death. In July 1965, Lester Long, aged 22, was shot and killed by police after a ‘routine’ traffic stop. A few weeks later, Bernard Rich, a 26-year old African-American male, died in police custody under mysterious circumstances while locked in his jail cell. On Christmas eve that year, Walter Mathis, aged 17, was fatally wounded by an ‘accidental’ weapons discharge while being searched for illegal contraband. Despite calls for the appointment of a civilian police review board and hiring of more African American policemen, such proposals went unheeded. Police-related shootings and beatings for the most part were not prosecuted; Few cases of police abuse in Newark ever made it to a jury.

“Political Exclusion

“The mutual suspicion and hostility that characterized the relationship between black citizens and the police in Newark were matched by feelings of political powerlessness and acrimony toward political officials. Black residents of Newark were not only underrepresented on the police force, but were also sorely absent from the corridors of political power. This disparity of political power was self-evident in Newark, when Mayor Hugh Addonizio, who had professed sensitivity to black concerns during his election campaign, failed to appoint blacks to leadership positions in his administration. Most tellingly was the manner with which the mayor handled a school board vacancy by appointing an Irish high school graduate, Councilman James T. Callaghan over Wilbur Parker, the first African-American certified public accountant in the State of New Jersey.

“Further contention resulted over the administration of federal anti-poverty funds. As part of President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, the federal government sought to channel funds to community groups in poor neighborhoods as a means of empowering poor people to address local social problems. Utilizing these funds, the black community began to organize politically. When federal anti-poverty funds were cut back, militant leaders like Amiri Baraka, then known as Leroi Jones began to speak of revolution.

“Urban Renewal

“In Newark, ‘urban renewal’ or ‘Negro removal’ as it was referred to by local residents, would play an important role in fomenting rebellion. Plans were already in place to build superhighways which would bisect the black community. Then in the early months of 1967 the city proposed the ‘clearance’ of 150 acres of ‘slum’ land to build a medical school/hospital complex. Of course, this would involve the demolition of numerous homes in the predominantly black Central Ward. Given the shortage of housing in other areas, the effects of such displacement were potentially devastating. Activist Tom Hayden succinctly summarized the resident’s fears: ‘The city’s vast programs for urban renewal, highways, downtown development, and most recently, a 150 acre Medical School in the heart of the ghetto seemed almost deliberately designed to squeeze out this rapidly growing Negro community that represents a majority of the population’ (Hayden 1968:6). Upon hearing of the proposal, members of the local community quickly mobilized and began to hold protest rallies. Some of the same people who attended these rallies were present at the 4th precinct house, when the riot started that summer. The city’s plan to build the medical school, while demolishing black occupied homes, helped set the stage for future confrontation.

“Unemployment and Poverty

“Amidst a backdrop of police brutality and housing crisis, a profound change was underway in the economic structure of cities like Newark and Detroit. By the late 1960s both cities were caught in the throes of industrial decline, for which black workers bore the brunt. The flight of manufacturing jobs, which had begun in the 1950s, accelerated during the 1960s. In Newark, the famed breweries that drew water from the polluted Passaic River shut down, as did the tanneries which fouled the water to begin with. The big conglomerates, Westinghouse and General Electric, who manufactured large appliances in Newark soon followed. In their wake, thousands of jobs were lost.

“As a result of previous discrimination and poor education, black workers, who were concentrated in heavy industry, felt the impact of these changes more than white workers who had moved upward into managerial and professional jobs. But it was black youth, just entering the labor market, who seemed to have suffered the most in the long run. The Hughes Commission (1968) stated the following grim statistics. Among 16-19 year old Negro men, more than a third — 37.8% were jobless. ‘Aggravating the growing deficit of resources even further was the postwar abandonment by industry, leaving fewer employment opportunities nearby for the lower skilled and unskilled who remained in or came into the city. Stripped of much of its leadership and other resources and faced with problems from before and after the war, the city came to be like a house ransacked’ (Wright p.57).

“Housing

“The quality and availability of housing was a major source of contention among black residents and government officials. A public opinion survey by the Governor’s Select Commission on Civil Disorder in New Jersey, otherwise known as the Hughes Commission, revealed that 54% of black respondents indicated that “housing problems had a ‘great deal to do with the riot’” Much of the existing housing in Newark during the mid-to late 1960s was uninhabitable by modern safety and health standards. The city’s own application for the Model Cities program in 1966 ‘described over 40,000 of the city’s 136,000 housing units as substandard or dilapidated’. (Report for Action 1968:55). Slumlords collected rent but often failed to perform regular maintenance, let alone improvements, to their properties. (Sternlieb 1969). Sometimes landlords simply set fire to their property in hope of receiving an insurance windfall. Between 1961 and 1967 Newark averaged 3620 structural fires per year. (Winters 1979:5). Due to their limited housing options, blacks in Newark paid more money for lesser quality domiciles. Public housing in Newark merely helped concentrate poverty and despair in one centralized location, further isolating the black poor from the society at large.

“Demographic Change

“In Newark, as a result of post-war suburban migration, the white population plummeted to approximately 158,000 in 1967 from 363,000 in 1950 and 266,000 in 1960. Correspondingly, the black population of Newark rose from 70,000 in 1950 to 125,000 in 1960 and an estimated 220,000 in 1967. By 1967, a majority of Newark residents (55%) were African-American. Demographic changes at the city level, were reflected in particular neighborhoods, namely the Central Ward, formerly home to a sizable concentration of immigrant and second generation Jews. Abandoning their homes and synagogues, these Jews, along with some Poles and Italians, fled for the suburbs of nearby South Orange, West Orange, and Livingston. By the time of the riot, the Central Ward was a predominantly black neighborhood, yet served by mostly Jewish owned businesses — a recipe for ethnic tension. With respect to Newark in the 1960s Dr. Nathan Wright Jr. stated, ‘All societies strive more for order than for orderly but needed changes. Thus it would seem immediately fallacious to deny that gross discrimination did not exist in a city that has moved from an 85 percent white urban oriented majority in 1940 to a nearly 60 percent black, strongly rural oriented black majority in 1965. Newark has been—and is—the scene of massive urban change. Such change brings disorganization’. (Wright p.8). Riot fatalities in Newark were concentrated in neighborhoods that had experiences the most rapid rate of black in-migration and white outmigration during the previous decade.” (Herman, Max, Ph.D. “Newark Riots-1967.” www.67riots.rutgers.edu.)

Parks: “….Nearly every authority figure in the city was white – from police, whose reputation for brutality was notorious among the black community, to teachers, to City Hall bureaucrats. The mayor, Hugh Addonizio, was white. And while he appointed blacks to some prominent positions and consulted a council of black ministers whom he felt represented the African-American community’s interests….

“Heading into the summer of 1967, Newark seemed primed for…unrest. The city’s application for federal funding under the Model Cities program, filed April 25, 1967, described conditions as follows:

“Among major American cities, Newark and its citizens face the highest percentage of substandard housing, the most crime per 100,000 of population, the heaviest per capita tax burden, the sharpest shifts in population and the highest rate of venereal disease, new cases of tuberculosis and maternal mortality. In addition, Newark is second among major cities in population density, second in infant mortality, second in birth rate, seventh in absolute number of drug addicts.”

“….As Newark lurched into the summer of 1967, the unease felt around Springfield and Bergen had a variety of sources.

“The mayor enraged the black community by selecting Councilman James Callaghan for Board of Education secretary, shunning Wilber Parker, a black man who served as the city’s budget director and appeared to be more qualified. There had also been an incident reported in the newspapers about police beating up a group of black Muslims on the Newark-East Orange border.

“But the issue that seemed to crystallize the discontent was the location for a new state-run medical school, the future University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. Addonizio wanted the school desperately for Newark as a replacement for Martland Medical Center, the city-run hospital known in the neighborhood as “the butcher shop on the hill.” He made his chief of staff, Donald Malafronte, head of the negotiations. As Malafronte tells it, the medical school’s trustees wanted no part of Newark but did not want to appear racist. So they declared that a world-class medical school would require a minimum of 150 acres, figuring a crowded city like Newark could never find the space. Except Malafronte called the trustees’ bluff, taking a city map and drawing a line around 150 acres of Central Ward slum.

“The mistake we made is that in the effort to win the medical school, we focused so much on winning – just winning – we lost sight of the impact that would have on the community…We were never going to give the medical school that much land. We just wanted to unmask the falseness of the demand for 150 acres.”

“But that was never communicated to the area’s residents, most of them poor and black. What they got instead were notices from the Newark Housing Authority saying they would have to be relocated to make way for the medical school. “These were people who were always being forced to move for one thing or another, whether it was a landlord ordering them out or another so-called urban renewal project,” said Junius Williams, who today heads a school-reform group at Rutgers-Newark called the Abbott Leadership Institute. At the time, Williams was a young law student working alongside Hayden and the other student organizers. “They were tired of feeling powerless.”

“The grim joke circulating through the black neighborhoods was that “urban renewal” was really the white man’s code for “Negro removal.” And the forces opposed to such removal soon united under the banner of a charismatic character who called himself Colonel Hassan from the Black Liberation Army. “He added a kind of mystique to the movement,” said George Richardson, an assemblyman and leader in the black community. “He used to march around with these soldiers. (Police Director Dominick) Spina was convinced he had 5,000 men. I never saw more than five.” Hassan’s real name was Albert Ray Osborne. He was a wig salesman from Washington, D.C., and something of a con artist who had been charged with passing bad checks. He was later revealed to be an FBI informant. But no one knew that at the time. They just knew his actions made for great theater.

“At one particularly heated Planning Board meeting in late May 1967, one of Hassan’s lieutenants toppled a stenography machine and Hassan threw it at the dais. It was the first time a protest by Newark’s black community became physical…

“It was about to become far worse. On Wednesday evening, July 12, 1967, two white Newark policemen, John DeSimone and Vito Pontrelli, arrested a black cabdriver, John W. Smith, for improperly passing them on 15th Avenue….

“In the ensuing years, much has been written about Smith, what exactly did or didn’t happen during his arrest, and why the beating of a cabdriver no one knew sparked such passion. Some now view that focus on Smith as misguided. “The cops beat up cabdrivers every Saturday night in this city. It was sport for them,” said Gus Heningburg, the founding president of the Greater Newark Urban Coalition. “There was nothing different about John Smith than there was about 1,000 other cabdrivers who were arrested 1,000 other times. To assign that one thing as a trigger is much too simplistic.”….

“A Star-Ledger review of State Police archives, numerous interviews and an examination of film footage also suggests Smith’s designation as the spark of the Newark riots has been overplayed.

“The looting that followed Smith’s arrest on the night of the 12th and morning of the 13th, limited to a few stores and $2,500 in damage, was minor compared with what was to come. An emergency command post at the Roseville Armory was activated in case the trouble spread. But it did not. By 3 a.m., the city was calm….

“Still, at UCC Area Board No. 2, where less than a year earlier [Stokely] Carmichael urged a crowd to rebel, they did not want Smith’s beating to go unnoticed. Fliers were printed informing residents of a protest against police brutality outside the 4th Precinct that night.

“As dusk fell, several hundred local residents gathered along with a few TV trucks. The event stayed nonviolent until a woman – whose identity remains unknown – stepped out of the crowd with a metal bar in her hand and began methodically bashing out the street-level windows of the 4th Precinct. “The people saw this and just went wild,” said Malafronte, who saved footage of the event. “And then suddenly you had the famous police charge. I say that ironically. Their ‘charge’ is really six or eight guys stumbling out of the front door of the precinct wearing World War I helmets. They’re bumping into each other, not sure what to do. By that point, people were running down the street and the real looting was starting.”….

“If anything, the looting was festive at first. Morris Hatkinson, now 89, has been living at or near Springfield Avenue since 1922. He doesn’t mind admitting he joined the fun. “I just went in and grabbed me some liquor,” Hatkinson said, laughing at the memory. “There were guys going in and taking TVs and radios. It was just stealing, that’s all.”

“The profile that emerges of the typical looter from the 1,465 arrests made during the disturbance is of a black male (85 percent), who had a job (73 percent), lived in Newark or a surrounding town (96 percent), but was born south of the Mason-Dixon line (54 percent, versus 27 percent born in Newark).

“There are no exact figures on how many people engaged in looting. Even if it was several thousand, that would be a small percentage of the city’s black population, which then was close to 200,000. The majority of residents in the vicinity of Springfield and Bergen remained on the sidelines, horrified by the destruction of their own neighborhood. Still, neither they nor the black community leaders who walked through the area, urging calm, could stop the storm….

Loss of Control

“The Newark police had bigger problems on their hands. Spina, the police director, always felt that preparing for a riot encouraged one, so his officers did not have equipment or training for what transpired as darkness fell on July 13….

“An entry in State Police headquarters transmission logs summarize the reports received from Newark shortly after midnight July 14: “Presently bands of 8-to-15 people traveling on foot and cars looting and starting fires. 4 Policemen injured. 4 new areas have broken out within the past 15 minutes. There is still no organization within the Newark Police Department. All available transportation in use. The 4th Precinct appears to be running their own show. There are no barricades. No request for State Police assistance from Director Spina.” That appeared to change at 1:40 a.m., when transmission logs note a call from Newark Deputy Police Chief John Redden to State Police Maj. Eugene Olaff. “I was on the phone with John Redden, who was looking for help,” said Olaff, now 86. “The next thing I know, the mayor grabbed the phone and said, ‘We don’t need any help.’ And he hung up.”

“For Mayor Addonizio, there was more than just a riot to consider. He was lining up a run for governor in 1969 – he even had campaign buttons made up. Calling for help would be admitting he had lost his city. And as for his gubernatorial aspirations, it would mean: “We are done, dead and cooked politically,” said Addonizio’s deputy mayor, Paul Reilly. Addonizio’s inner circle continued a spirited debate until they received a report of looting at the Sears Roebuck on Elizabeth Avenue. “Sears and Roebuck at that time had a lot of rifles and munitions,” said Frank Addonizio, the councilman. “So not only did you have a mob, it was an armed mob.”

“It was this report, say Malafronte and Reilly, that forced the stunned mayor to relent. At 2:20 a.m., he awoke Gov. Richard Hughes and made the formal request for State Police assistance….

“Hughes immediately mobilized the State Police and the National Guard. There was a brief discussion as to how forceful the state’s response should be. But David Satz Jr., who then was the U.S. attorney for New Jersey, said Hughes was set on placing the operation in the hands of Col. David Kelly, the State Police’s crew-cutted, no-nonsense State Police superintendent. “We tried to sit on the State Police to the extent we could,” Satz said. “But there was an attitude that said: ‘We can beat them up. Let’s go.’”

“Up until Mayor Addonizio’s call to Hughes, there had been only superficial injuries and no deaths. That was about to change.
Shotgun Blast

“As historians view it today, the disturbances in Newark essentially can be split into two events: a shopping spree (by looters) and a shooting spree (by authorities). “The first phase was a commercial riot, when you have people breaking into stores and taking whatever they can carry,” said Clement Price, a history professor at Rutgers-Newark. “The second phase was a police riot, when you have police and National Guardsmen firing their weapons indiscriminately. Both phases involve a level of lawlessness by certain individuals.”

“Both extracted a dear price. The looting eventually did more than $10 million in damage (about $62 million in 2007 dollars), to say nothing of what it did to the city’s reputation. The shooting left 26 people dead.

“The first deaths ringed the intersection of Springfield and Bergen as authorities moved to stomp out the looting. James Sanders and Tedock Bell were the riot’s first fatalities, according to the time of death as reported by the Governor’s Select Commission on Civil Disorder, a blue-ribbon panel later assembled by Governor Hughes to study the uprising.

“Sanders was burglarizing a liquor store at Springfield and Jones, five blocks east of Bergen, at 4:10 a.m. on July 14 when, according to an Essex County grand jury, “officers pursued him through a vacant lot where Sanders, while running, turned and threw a bottle at them. After he failed to comply with a command to halt, he was felled by a shotgun blast.”

“Bell, who lived at 411 Bergen St., one block south of the intersection with Springfield, was caught looting a store at Bergen and Magnolia at 4:30 a.m. “He was shot by an unidentified Newark police officer who had called him to a halt,” the grand jury reported.

“Other dead were not involved in looting. Eddie Moss was a passenger in a car when a stray bullet from a National Guard checkpoint hit him behind the right ear. He was 10.

“Eloise Spellman was leaning out her 10th-story window in Hayes Homes when an unknown National Guardsman mistook her for a sniper and fatally shot her in the neck. She left behind 11 children.
Friendly Fire

“At the time, many of the deaths – particularly those of Newark Police Detective Fred Toto and Newark Fire Capt. Michael Moran – were blamed on snipers. The State Police reported 79 separate “sniper incidents” from July 14 to 17. The corner of Springfield and Bergen had 13 incidents, making it the hottest corner in the city for sniper fire…. Despite those claims, historians now doubt how widespread sniping really was – or whether snipers existed at all.

“Individual reports filed by state troopers detail hundreds of man hours spent searching hundreds of buildings. Yet police never found one sniper. And despite ample opportunities to shoot authorities – a total of 1,390 Newark police, 627 state troopers and 5,900 National Guardsmen were committed to riot detail – only Toto and Moran lost their lives. In each case, the source of the fatal shot was never conclusively determined. “If there were any snipers,” said Kenneth T. Jackson, a historian at Columbia University, “they were lousy shots.”

“There were certainly bullets flying around Newark: The State Police reported firing 2,905 rounds; the National Guard fired 10,414; the Newark police could not account for the number of rounds because of use of private weapons. But with those three organizations on different radio frequencies, communication between them often was poor. Much of the “sniping” was really authorities unwittingly firing and returning fire at each other. “There wasn’t a sniper within 100 miles of Newark,” says Kenneth Gibson, who was three years away from being elected the city’s first black mayor. “There were just a lot of cops and guardsmen with guns, firing at shadows.”

“Claude Coleman, a Superior Court judge who was then a Newark police officer assigned to the 4th Precinct, says he realized as much at the time. “At first, we spent a lot of time responding to state police or national guard who said they were pinned down by sniper fire,” Coleman said. “But when you talked to them, they never had any specific knowledge of where the gunfire that had them pinned down was coming from. It took us a while to realize, but finally we figured out they were being pinned down by their own gunfire.”

“Sometimes all it would take was the echoing of a bullet fired several blocks away – or the landing of a bullet that had been shot in the air elsewhere – to make an officer think he was under fire. Sometimes, it was even less than that. Craig Mierop, who was part of the 50th Armored unit of the New Jersey National Guard, was stationed at the No. 6 firehouse just east of Springfield and Bergen. His unit was told sniper fire was coming from across the street, and Mierop thought he saw someone move through a window, then duck. “I told myself, ‘If I see it again, I’ll shoot,” Mierop said. “Well, I saw it again but I realized it was just a curtain blowing. At that moment someone in my unit said, ‘I see him,’ and fired a shot. “Suddenly the volume of fire was just ridiculous. I tried to yell ‘Stop’ and tell them they were shooting at a curtain, but who could hear me?”….

“The confusion was particularly acute among some National Guardsmen, whose one-weekend-a-month training sessions had not included riot preparation. “A lot of times you’d ask a question and the non-coms wouldn’t have an answer, because they hadn’t been told what to do, either,” said Don Boonstra, a guardsman from the Paterson Armory, referring to the non-commissioned officers. Other guardsmen were given more explicit instructions. “There was one officer who pretty much told us to shoot at will,” said Ed Poteet, who came out of the Westfield Armory. “To him, they (the looters) were just a bunch of animals who needed to be exterminated. To me, you don’t kill someone for taking a television.”

“More than anything, Newark was a foreign place to most guardsmen, who were primarily middle-class whites with ordinary day jobs that did not take them to places like Springfield and Bergen. “My unit had 50 guys and none of them were black,” said Mierop, now a semi-retired commercial art director living in Montclair. “For most of them, their closest personal relationship with a black person was with a lady on a pancake box. It’s not that they didn’t like black people, they were just scared of them.”….

“The State Police received many commendations for their conduct, from citizens groups and politicians alike. But there was one stain on their record: the so-called “Soul Brother” shootings, when a group of rogue troopers shot out hundreds of store windows owned by black merchants…. What allowed this to happen has never been known, but a Star-Ledger analysis of documents revealed a likely scenario. According to nine citizen complaints in State Police archives, the shootings happened sometime between 3 and 5 a.m. on Sunday, July 16. During those hours, transmission log files at the Roseville Armory indicated Governor Hughes was holding a press conference. With reporters and cameramen at the press conference, the Soul Brother shooters apparently took advantage of the diminished media scrutiny to do their work. “They were getting ready to leave,” said Richardson, the former assemblyman, who received several complaints of State Police shooting at his office. “And they wanted to give us something to remember them by.”….” (Parks, Brad. “Crossroads Pt. 2: 5 days that changed a city.” NJ.com, 7-9-2011.)

Sources

Brown, Richard Maxwell (Editor). American Violence. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1970.

Governor’s Select Commission on Civil Disorders. Report for Action: An Investigation Into the Causes and Events of the 1967 Newark Race Riots (Hughes Commission Report). Feb 1968. Accessed 12-22-2012 at: http://slic.njstatelib.org/slic_files/digidocs/c5815/c58151968.pdf

Herman, Max. “Newark (New Jersey) Riot of 1967,” pp. 447-452 in Rucker, Walter C. and James N. Upton (Eds.). Encyclopedia of American Race Riots (Vol. 2 of 2). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2007.

Herman, Max, Ph.D. “Newark Riots – 1967.” Accessed 12-22-2012 at: www.67riots.rutgers.edu.

National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, “Summary.” Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1968.

Parks, Brad. “Crossroads Pt. 2: 5 days that changed a city.” NJ.com, 7-9-2011. Accessed 12-22-2012: http://blog.nj.com/ledgernewark/2007/07/crossroads_pt_2.html

Porambo, Ronald. No Cause for Indictment: An Autopsy of Newark. Hoboken, NJ: Melville House, 2007.

Rucker, Walter C. and James N. Upton (Eds.). Encyclopedia of American Race Riots (Vol. 2 of 2). Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2007.)

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