Provided the video. Good morning, everyone and thank you for joining us for what promises to be a timely, eliminating roundtable discussion looking back on the 50th anniversary of the successful struggle to elect newarks first black mayor, kenneth gibson. Elected in june of 1917, is an 1970,stration marked his administration was part of a wave of political to 1974. Ion from 1967 his history is vital right now as black lives struggle against Police Violence against george floyd, breonna taylor, and the attempted murder of jacob blake have found a call for black liberation ball raising familiar questions about the roles of electoral politics and black freedom struggles. Electionago, gibsons came on the heels of the 1967 rebellion in newark, the Police Beating about unarmed man sparked an uprising against White Supremacy and its enforcers in blue and its enforcers in blue in the jim crow north. Racism,anizing around renewal projects, and countlessl injustice, beatings had gone unpunished and brought thousands to the streets that july. State police and National Guardsmen were called into violently suppressed the uprising, claiming 2000 lives in the process and many others. Newarksllowing days, black and pretty can leveraged people power and momentum to build Community Power and organized successful campaigns for Community Control of urban development, educational justice, and political power in the state. The organized the round of principles of cultural nationalism and begin building educational, cultural, economic and Political Institutions and organizations, including the united brothers in the community for unified newark. Heavily armed white militias patrolled the citys north ward, signifying a violent black backlash for the black demands for selfdetermination. Gibson,charge came ken a moderate who had run unsuccessfully in the previous mayoral election. Running alongside black and pritikin candidates for city council, his campaign became a National Call celeb cause celebre, that brought celebrities to newark to lend their celebrity to the cause. Meanwhile in the streets and neighborhoods, organi organizers had an unprecedented voter turnout that has yet to be matched. Gibsons campaign and election illustrated the excitement and aspirations of black political power in the north. Is an administration quickly revealed the limitations of black the ration through the ballot box, devolution that has again recently become abundantly clear in cities like chicago and atlanta. What are the legacies of this era of struggle and what lessons do they hold for a new generation of activists that have been in the streets are over 100 days demanding systemic change of black liberation . Here to discuss the legacies and lessons of these histories are beatrice adams, phd candidate in african argan history at rutgers ,niversity and researcher Junius Williams esquire, the official city historian for newark and author of unfinished nda, and the producer andofessor of history author of a nation within a nation the first question will be for professor williams. You are a leader in the struggle against the urban renewal project that would displace thousands of newarkers. Can you describe how activists and organizers leveraged the momentum generated by the 1967 rebellion to organize for political power in newark . You are on mute. And thankou, peter, you for the work you have done. School was an example of a strategy which ofbined all aspects political rebellion. The demonstration had already taken place. Thedemonstration was rebellion. There was no need to go back in the streets. We had been in the strict. More people in the streets then at any other time. I was working with the man who of theecame chairman local chapter. With thebeen working new Community Union project and i said, well, suppose we do Something Different . After the rebellion people were scared, white people were scared. Suppose we do Something Different . I was at yale and taking classes at the architecture and planning and i said to my friend, can you thea plan that shows plan they have for the medical school . They want 150 acres. They came up with a plan for 19 acres. Legalthe lawyers from the defense fund who had, up until that time, been working mainly in the south. They filed the complaint and said, you cannot build this Hospital Medical school. With that in mind there was a new coalition and that coalition the nameless and faceless brother with a brick into a plan, an agreement which called for 60 acres of land for the hospital and medical school, acres on which they built 1000 units of housing. Peoplertunity for black to get involved through unions. Apprentices, one third journeymen, and other aspects which i do not have time to go into. That was the beginning of the coalition that morphed into the unified into the united brothers. Morphed into the platform that brought gibson into electoral power. Peter thank you, professor williams. Woodard, you remember the late 1960s and early 1970s. Can you explain the objectives be had the Gibson Campaign and how this election fit within black political power struggles . You are on you. Prof. Woodard can you hear me now . All right. After the assassinations of malcolm x, the black panther, fred hampton, and Martin Luther king jr. There was a great vacuum in leadership. By the time dr. King came to amiti baracka had met with malcolm x and they had told him about the alabama black party organizing and planted the seeds of an idea to make new work the northern counterpart newark the northern counterpart for the black panther. It was the black power experiment in the jim crow north. When dr. King met witwith a partnership. D dr. King was assassinated less than two weeks after that meeting. That front was packed into the june 1968 Political Convention in newark in the 1968 National Black power conference in philadelphia. Point the National Black power conference made newark the test case for black power politics. All kinds of resources streamed into newark based on that agreement. From the Civil Rights Movement on the one hand, black Power Movement on the other hand, and the black cultural revolution that was going on in the popular art throughout the country. Accidentally, white vigilantes were attacking and mobbing africanamerican and Puerto Ricans in the streets of newark. Poets, amiritwo , signed a felipe mutual defense pact insisting the attack on the Puerto Rican Community was an attack on the Africanamerican Community and vice versa. That mutual appreciation and trust grew into a Political Alliance that was articulated at the 1968 black and Puerto Rican Convention. That ended up being the winning formula. Ran ane united brothers allblack ticket at an allblack convention. We lost. 969, we started early organizing for the 1970 election. With the alliance of blacks and Puerto Ricans, and progressive won and the other piece is that the campaign fundatus for the newark did not disband when the election was over. After winning that election and learning how to use mass media and publications they organized an International Meeting in atlanta, georgia and then the gary convention, the african liberation stay in washington, d. C. And so on. Together that put that fund immunity counsel after church. We have to remember, it was after church, and it was called face the nation. Basically they would stand up the municipal officials and grade their paper. Are you cleaning the streets . Are you doing Health Requirements and things like that. It was an ongoing political movement, but that convention, some of us were students. We studied the black conventions in the 19th century and we thought that would be a workable formula for the 20th century. I think young people now just had a convention, i think last week, using that same method. Nutshell, that is with the strategy was. Thank you. Peter thank you, professor watered. Professor adams, he spent a lot of time researching various aspect of the Gibson Administration and struggles for black selfdetermination. Could you talk about how the Gibson Administration measured up to the expectations the people had for him . Adams of course. Blackmere for dr. Blac for suggesting i be on the panel. About talk a little bit my research for the project in the event that comes to mind is the 1974 puerto rican riot. Like so many rebellions in American History it was sparked by Police Violence. There was an annual cultural celebration happening in newark. HadPuerto Rican Community ounted police and chaos a erupts. A little girl is trampled by one of the horses. Intense tensions between the police and the Puerto Rican Community who have already been frustrated. Gibson arrives and tries to calm the tensions. There is a march gibson participates in downtown to city hall. The next day he is in a meeting with some of the leaders of the Puerto Rican Community and the spanishspeaking can unity in general. I think this is illuminating. Gibson does something in this meeting that is a little bit candid for a politician. Limitations ofe black political power. They are asking questions about unemployment, asking questions about housing, and gibson says, i can only do so much as mayor. Sometimes i listen to people say, oh, the president is down oron up limi on up limit o up. Unemployment go up or down. He is in a way dismissing experiences saying i cannot do anything, this is beyond my control, these issues you are bringing to me, im not interested in your pain. I think gibson is a lot less radical revolutionary than the movement that gets him into office. We already mentioned the black and Puerto Rican Convention that kind of allows him to become mayor. That is the way he rises to office. Many of us think about it as a comparison between gibson and amiri baraka and how there is not a lot of love there. For a long time. Baraka is in the meeting and gibson is not necessarily hearing the people. But he is elected four times. He is doing something and i think he is modeling something. He is trying to be the mayor for everybody. He is trying to serve the totality of the community that has had internal ruptures. There is a nobleness to that, but i also think, and i also talk about jackson in the american south, and he seems to have a different stance. He does have this kind of black empowerment stance. We think about one of the greatest successes was black millionaires. I do not know if we could say the same about gibson. Blacks create this Political Class of people working in and around city hall, but he is much more trying to brand himself as a mayor for everyone. I think that really speaks to both the possibilities of black Political Leadership and the limitations of black Political Leadership. Peter thank you. You are much more concise than i anticipated. We have a little bit extra time. I get to ask an additional question. The black and Puerto Rican Convention of 1969 was brought up several times. Im wondering if you would like to speak more about the atmosphere at the convention, with that convention represented in the Political Climate in 1969, and maybe some of what you are recalling about the platform and how that compared to what gibsons administration was actually about and prioritizing. Prof. Williams i can talk about that. It was supercharged with hope. Most of us were young. Most of us were black but we also had Puerto Ricans and an even smaller amount of white people. All had come together in this runition which was actually by two sets of people. One where the moderates headed by the official leader and the other by amiri baraka. Difficultme it was for the then Campaign Manager i was his first but by arrangement we had someone involved with more campaigns than i had. Of a thing trying to answer to two separate leaderships. On the convention went without a hitch. You mentioned some of the folks who had been there. We had dick gregory, all kinds , andrs ,political stars from the entertainment world. It was a success. We went out of their thinking here was going to be t thinking this was going to be the script for what black power would look like in the city of newark. Committed. One of the planks platform was that the state should take over the financing of the School District because newark did not have enough tax money to do that. Thatn never talked about abbot1981 we had the versus bert case where they were going have to pay for the schooling in the abbott district. Another thing that came up was, one, the question of a Police Review board. People were adamant about that because the police had been beating up and killing people then as they are now. Thatn never mentioned during his campaigning and when he was elected i said in a meeting and i heard him say, i am the police. Review board we di review board. I did not anticipate that. Those are instances of what we wanted versus what we got. Offered a specific objective that was measurable. Specific golden objectives that were measurable. Gibson said he wanted to meet with those in leadership capacity on a regular basis. Saidd one meeting and he words to the effect, i am the mayor for all the people and we are not going to do that. Aka the elderr saying, we elected him to be the mayor but nobody thought he was going to run the city by himself. That was a forecast of what was i have to say one thing. Inre was a leadership vacuum newark when baraka got together. There was no leadership. We had a fantastic setting the there was leadership. There is leadership in the education era with callahan fight, the medical school fight. They were people in leadership positions and i do not want to think there was nothing going on until our brother came in. Newark. As from but the political wave that followed in his absence while he was away was as homegrown as what was done when he got there and have the insight and foresight to do what he did as you explained. I am sorry. D i was trying to make it brief. There was a section in my talk akaut a few years before bar came back, i was part of the student movement. There were thousands of people who meeting regularly, usually protest meetings, about ethnic cleansing which they called urban renewal. That is what united the community. Small groups had had important protests, but the ethnic cleansing formula look everybody woke everybody up and everybody from street hustlers, welfare livers, autoworkers. There was a Mass Movement baraka came back into. He got anointed leader because he was beat up by the police on the first day of the rebellion, right . That is the whole thing. Convergent strange of all these different factors that happened in july 1967 that merged the National Black power conference, which it already been planned, with the newark and detroit rebellions. Because of that fusion it created a new narrative of black political power. I definitely did not want to leave that out. I think that Community Council was, in essence, the early leaders who would already been meeting. As a matter of fact, the Research Suggests those people were active in the 1950s with the National Negro labor council. I was always trying to find out when i went to the first meeting in 1968 when everybody understood the rules of how a black Political Convention work if it was the only first one. It was only after doing my homework i found out the elders had been organizing since the 1950s. And many long struggle leaders were involved. Prof. Williams let me say one more thing that. You left out a step. That coalition did include people from that age group, but those of us who were involved in the urban renewal struggle where young people mostly, coming from the younger organizations. Group, that was the first big coalition, the first step that i was talking about. Baraka did not organize that. That came around the medical school fight and we got specific. We won. The next step was the united ka calledand bara together some of us who had been involved in the police struggles and took it to the next step. Peter thank you. I want to ask one last question before we open up to the q a. I want to raise one more name that we have not named who is george richardson. He was organizing for black political power in the city during the mid1960s. Levelg at city and county and state level offices, putting together an Interracial Committee to organize and build political power. I just want to make sure we do not leave out of this progression. Just to cap this off and transition to the q a, i want to ask the three of you, from either your participation or study of this era, what kind of lessons do you draw from this era you would share with you organizers and engaging electoral politics . Prof. Adams when we sent black power we did not realize each class understood black power to be a different thing. When people like gibson were elected, he thought black power had been achieved. The people in the Senate Movement who were suffering in Public Housing and going on read strike understood black power had not been achieved. One of the things in terms of having these conventions and political movements is that each sector of the Community Needs to articulate what they mean by freedom now or black power and make sure that is on the table. I remember meeting with a black businessman from atlanta, georgia who said he worked with dr. King. I said, what did you do . He said, my father insured his cars. [laughter] i was waiting for the other shoe to drop. They were saying the same words but they meant different things. Youre going to risk your life and raise the money and do these things to elect people. Whateds to be understood are these concerns . What is that agenda . Prof. Williams with respect to the alexion aspect i heard a young minister on some National Radio program and he was asked whether he was going to vote i guess he was in his 30s and he said he decided whether or not he was going to vote. Withe had been betrayed the elections in the past therefore he was going to keep organizing in the street. Him howanted to say to foolish that sounds because you can do both. You have to do both. There is no point sitting around and letting the big house go to somebody who is going to keep you from organizing in the street and beat you down, kill opposed to can, as using the street demonstrations as a punctuation mark to underline the faith people had put into those folks we put into office. If for no other reason than to think, well, our political objectives, if they have power nowadays not just black power but the way the black lives matter defines it we want to have power for that coalition of people, but you also want to get rid of somebody who is against you. That is just as relevant to what you are trying to do. If nothing else, organize for elections as part of the reason for your being. You want to achieve a political objective. You have got to do this one last thing to get the plan a little more even. That is one of the things we talked about. Program to celebrate what the community did to elect gibson of which all you were part in some way or other. We were all involved in the riseupnewark. Com. I would love for you to take a look at that. And that two hour session we have, and went to some other mass media events, we had 18,000 people looking at what we call power where we celebrated the ability of the people to change from street organizations, small, unpredictable organizations and come into bigger organizations. Further into election organizations to put caken gibson into power. We were not able to sustain that movement afterward and hold gibson accountable. At the same point i do not think anybody learned how to keep politicians accountable when you are talking about organizations from the left. Nobody has done that but the right, they control them by money. Nobody has learned how to do that. You do not stop doing it. You learn how to do that but the first thing you have got to do is make the plan a little more even so you have got to participate in the elections. Prof. Adams im good to slide in really quick. I wanted to say about black women in this movement as well. My vehicle into this history was a student rebellion that happened at rutgers newark. I was researching another public history project and it was vicki donaldson. She was part of that conference. She was the strong, powerful Freedom Fighter in this history i was telling about race and rutgers. Her there were women on welfare fighting for reform. We talk about the tenets fighting the rent strikes. Even when it came to urban upewal, a black woman called lnd said, did the mayor tel you he is trying to grab our homes . I had to get that psa. The women are fighting alongside everybody else. Prof. Woodard the community is organizing the institutions and economic development. That Initiative Came from grassroots and not from the top. Although i was at the groundbreaking of Frederick Douglass housing with reverend jones, and we saw gibson cut the ribbon and get the credit for it reverend jones looked at me and said,. That is the way it goes. We do the work and the mayor takes the credit. We cannot have amnesia about who is doing the work otherwise the work will not get done. It is very important to understand all those community institutions, african free school, newark school, chad school, the black youth organization, there were hundreds of organizations that is the meat and potatoes. Said prudential would not be interested. [laughter] we did not know they were in the room. We tried to tell him if you look in brooklyn, they turned that into the restoration corporation. We studied that and tried to bring that to newark and he vetoed that. With the police saying remember, disruption continued to be important. Moppede white vigilantes my construction workers mobbed my construction workers the city stormed into the Council Meeting by the thousands to demand a Police Director. We had a white Police Director under gibson who resigned when it came to arresting black people i mean white people who had beaten up the black construction workers. Movement and the power of disruption to say youre not going to have this meeting unless these thousand voices are heard. Again, is and over the thing that made progress in newark. Scholars a panel of talks about africanamerican activism and talk about rosa parks and congressman john conyers. This was part of the association the study of africanamerican life. They also provided the video. Panelists three today. I think i have the order right. Who is alle mcguire great friend from grad school and colleague. Andis author and historian independent author now. We also have i have lost track of who is going