Black political organizing that culminated in the election of course black mayors like cleveland, atlanta and detroit from 1967 to 1974. They feel particularly vital right now as blackled struggles in the wake of Police Murders of george floyd in minneapolis, Breonna Taylor in louisville, and kenosha have sounded the call for black liberation while raising questions about the role of electoral politics and black freedom struggles. 50 years ago gibsons landmark election came on the heels was 1967 rebellion in newark when the Police Beating of an unarmed black man, john smith, had whit supremacy and its enforcers in blue in the jim crow north. Amid heightened racist renewal projects and educational injustice, it recalled countless Police Killings that had gone unpublished into the years and brought thousands into the streets that july. State police and National Guardsmen were brought into the city to violently suppress the uprising, claiming two dozen lives in the process including ed edd eddie moss among others. They had the moment are people power and momentum of the uprising to build Community Power and organized successful campaigns for Community Control of urban development, educational justice and political power in the city. Baraka organized around the principles of cultural nationalism and began with economic, and Political Institutions and organizations including the united brothers and community for unified newark received fund. At the same time, they pat rold the predominantly italian northward and terrorized black communities signifying the white backlash to black demands for human rights and selfdetermination. Into this charged political fray came ken gibson, an engineer and political moderate who had run unsuccessfully in the previous mayoral election. Running alongside of a slate of black and puerto rican candidates in city council, he became a National Cause celeb to bring the likes of fannie lou haimer, stevie wonder, marry belafonte and isaac hayes to lend their celebrity to the cause. Meanwhile, in the streets and neighborhoods, grassroots organizer registered and mobilized a voter tunout thats yet to be matched since. To subplant the racism of white liberal mayors and black progressives in the early 60s and 70s, the aspirations of black political power in the urban north. At the same time, they had the limitations and the revelation thats become abundantly clear in cities like chicago and atlanta . So are this for the areas of struggle and what does it hold for a new generation of activists and organizers who have been in the streets for over 100 days demanding systemic change and liberation. Here to discuss the legacies and lessons of these history are beatrice adam, a ph. D candidate in africanAmerican History in Rutgers University in new brunswick. Julius williams esquire, official city historian for newark and author of unfinished agenda, urban politics of black power. And lastly, kimozi water, a professor of history at st. Lawence college and author of a nation within a nation le roy baraka and black power politics. The first would be for professor williams. Youre an urban in the struggle that would have built the state Medical College in the late 1960s. Can you generated by the 1967 rebellion to organize for political power in newark . Youre on mute. Thank you, peter, and thank you for the work you have done in newark with rise up newark and other things. The medical school fight was an example of a strategy which combined all aspects of political rebellion. The demonstration had already taken place. The demonstration was the rebellion, so there was no need to go back in the streets. Weve been in the streets. People had been in the streets. More people were in the streets than at any other time in newarks history. So i was working with Phil Hutchins who later became the chairman of national, and the local chapter and i was working with snick at that time and i was working with the project called the local union project, and i said, well, suppose we do Something Different . Because after the rebellion people were scared and the white people were scared. Suppose we do Something Different . So i was in law school and yale and had taken classes at the architecture and planning and i said to my friend pat grodus, can you design a plan that shows how you can take the plan they had at the medical school which they won 150 acres and you can get it much smaller and so he did that and to make a long story short, they came up with a plan for 18 acres. Then i got the lawyers from the Legal Defense fund, which up to that point they were, woing mainly in the south and they came in and filed a complaint and said you cant build us, a hospital or medical group, so with with me, that is a new kohlition levied the power of that nameless and faceless brother about a brick, into a a plan and an agreement which is 60 acres of land and 60 acres of land for housing and that had been built almost a thousand units of housing with low and moderate income, and an opportunity for black people to get involved in the construction through the unions, onehalf gentlemen, onethird one half apprentices and onethird journeymen and various other aspects which i dont have time to go into, but to end, that was the beginning of the coalition that morphed into the united brothers which was called together in mary baraka and was in turn morphed to the committee for unified north which was the platform that brought gibson into the electoral power. Thank you, professor wi williams, you worked in the 1960s can you, plain the with the gibb sob campaign and how it fit with black political power in the 1970s . S campaign and howt with black political power in the 1970s . O campaign and how it fit with black political power in the 1970s . N campaign and how fit with black political power in the 1970s . Youre on mute. Yes. After the assassinations of malcolm x, dr. King and the black panther fred hampton, graduates and organizers felt a great vacuum and leadership. By the time that dr. King came to newark in 1968, baraka had met with malcolm x and stoky carmichael and brown or snick in particular and they told him about the alabama black Panther Party organizing and planted the seeds of an idea to make newark the northern counterpart for the county black Panther Party. So newark was supposedly the black power experiment in the jim crow north the way lounge county black panthers with the jim crow south. When dr. King came and met with newark and he proposed a black united front between the civil rights revolution and black power politics and king was assassinated less than two weeks after that meeting when he was assassinated april 4, 1968, that black united front was packed into the june 1968 black Political Convention in newark and the 1968 National Black power conference in philadelphia. At that point, the National Black power conferences made newark the test case for black power politics. So all kinds of resources streamed into newark based on that agreement, from the Civil Rights Movement on the one hand, the black Power Movement on the other hand and the black cultural revolution that was going on throughout the country. Accidentally, white vigilantes were attacking and mobbing africanamerican and Puerto Ricans in the streets of newark, and in response, two poet, baraka of the spirit house movers and the united brothers and Felipe Luciano of the poets and the young lords signed the mutual defense pack insisting that an attack on the Puerto Rican Community was an attack on the black community and vice versa. That mutual a praesh yagz and trust grew into a Political Alliance that was articulated at the 1968 black and puerto rican Political Convention, and that ended up being basically the winning formula and 1968 and the united brothers ran an allblack ticket at an allblack convention. We lost. 1969, we started early organizing for the 1970 election and with that alliance of blacks and Puerto Ricans and progressive whites. We won and the other piece of it that the Campaign Apparatus for the gibson and the newark fund didnt disband when the election was over and after winning that election and learning how to use mass media and publications, and organize the International Meeting in Atlanta Georgia and then they organized the gary convention, the african liberation in washington, d. C. And on and on. So the group that put that together was called the c Fund Community council, and met every sunday after church, right . And their program was called face the nation mimicking the tv program, and basically, they would stand up the municipal officials and grade their paper and are you cleaning the streets and are you doing the Health Requirements like that, and it was an ongoing Political Movement and that convention, some of us were students and we studied the black conventions in the 19th century and we thought that would be a workable formula for the 20th century, and i think young people now are just had a convention, i think it was last week, using and in a nutshell, thats what the strategy was. Thank you. Thank you, professor. Professor adams, you spent a lot of time researching various aspects of the Gibson Administration and continuing struggles for Self Determination during various years, can you talk about how the Gibson Administration measured up to the expectations that people have for him . Of course. I want to say thank you so much for doctor blackwell for asking me to serve on this panel and also thank you for allowing me to kind of be in all of these walking primary sources about this wonderful history of newark. So ill talk a little bit about my research for the project and the event that comes from asking this question is the 1974 puerto rican riot, and ill call it a rebellion and like so many rebellions in American History, it is sparked by a police violence, right . Theres the annual, cultural celebration happening in newark. The Puerto Rican Community is being overt. There are police there, mounted police and tension erupts over a dice game, a dominos game, and it is a debated historical fact, but what definitely happened is a little girl was trampled by one of the horses and of course, this sparks intense tensions between the police and the Puerto Rican Community who had already been frustrated for years. Gibson arrives on the scene, right . He tries to calm the tensions and theres actually a march and gibson participates in downtown and city hall. The next day, gibson is in the meeting with the Puerto Rican Community and also more broadly the spanishspeaking community in general and i think this is illuminating, right . And it is both a little bit candid for a politician to do and speaks to maybe some of the limitations of black political power, right . So, theyre asking questions about unemployment and theyre asking questions about housing and gibson says i can only do so much as a mayor, and sometimes i listen to people say e oh the president is uponing had unemployment go down. The president is helping unemployment go up and how much direct power do political actors have over all these things . Gibson is being honest in a way, and also, hes, in a way, dismissing the experiences, right . Saying that i cant do anything. This is beyond my control and some of the issues that youre bringing to me. Im not interested in paying as a community in this particular moment, and i think this speaks to, you know, gibson, is a little less, a lot less radical revolutionary in the movement that gets to office regarding the black and Puerto Rican Convention that kind of allows him to then become mayor, and that movement is the way you rise, right . To the office, and many of us think about it as a comparison between gibson and amir barack and how theres not a lot of love there. For a long time, right . Its the same. Baraka is in this meeting as well, too and these same tensions are not necessarily hearing the people or the constituency that got him elected, but hes elected four times, right . He served as mayor for four times so hes doing something, and i think he is modeling something that becomes important. Hes trying to be the mayor for everyone. Hes trying to serve the totality of a community that has had internal ruptures and has had internal tensions and there is some nobleness to that, right . But also, i think and i skom pair him in a way to my own work and i talked about jackson to the American South and he seems to have a different stance, right . By no means is jackson necessarily a militant, but he does have this kind of black empowerment stance if we think about one of his greatest successes is the cree asian of black millionaires. Did the contract goes from 1 to 27 of africanamerican, right . I dont know if we can say the same about gibson, right . He does create this kind of black Political Class of people who are working in and around city hall, but hes much more trying to brand himself as a mayor for everyone, and i think the way that really speaks to both the points, right, of black Political Leadership and also the limitations of black Political Leadership. Thank you. You all were much more concise than i anticipated so we have a little bit extra time so that gives me a chance to ask an additional question. The black and Puerto Rican Convention in 1969 was brought up several times and im wondering if any of you all would like to speak more about the atmosphere at the convention and what that convention represented in newarks Political Climate in 1969 and maybe some of the some of what youre recalling about the platform of that convention and how that compared to what gibsons administration was actually about and actually prioritized. Yeah. I can talk about that. The convention was super charged with hope. Most of us were young. Most of us were black, and we also had Puerto Ricans and then we had an even smaller amount of white people. All who would come together in this coalition which was actually ruined by two sets of people and one were the moderates headed by bob kerr and the official leader and the other by mary baraka, so at that time it was difficult for the then Campaign Manager and that was his first Campaign Manager by arrangement, and we got someone who had been involved with that campaign and certainly who came in and that was a hell of a thing, dan said and trying to answer to two separate leadership people, sets of people and also leadership style, but the convention went on without a hitch. You mentioned some of the folks who had been there, and i think thats a variable. Or maybe you didnt. We had dick gregory and all kinds of stars that are quote, unquote political stars as well as stars from the entertainment world, and it was a success. We went out of there thinking this was going to be a script, if you will, for what black power would look like in the city of newark. Among other things, there were committees that pointed it out at the end and one of the one of the planks in that platform was that the state should take over the financing of the School District because they didnt have enough tax money in the suburbs to do that. Now that didnt happen and gibson never talked about that, but in 1981 you had the abbott versus byrd case who said just that. The state will have it pay for the schooling of the people in the socalled abbott district because they dont have enough tax, so it was impressive in that sense. Another thing that came up, one was one was 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. Gibson never mentioned that during his campaigning and when he was elected i sat in a meeting and i heard him say im the Police Review board. Well, we didnt anticipate that. So that was those were two big instances of what we wanted versus what we got and they offered specific goals and objectives that were measurable. Specific goals and objectives that were measurable, and one of the things gibson was going to do is to meet with leadership capacity on a regular basis, we had one meeting and it was in effect, and were not going to do that. I remember baraka was saying to me, we elected her to be the mayor and did nobody think he would run city hall all by himself, but that was a forecast of what it was. I have to sigh one thing, ill disagree with what you said was that there was a leadership vacuum. No, was there no leadership vacuum in newark. We had done a fantastic job, setting the stage for the next step of the leadership was the united brothers. There was leadership and there was leadership in the area with the callahan fight and with the medical school fight, so there were people there who were in leadership positions and i dont want people to think that there was nothing going on until it came in with these ideas and baraka was from newark. He had people that knew him, but the political wave that followed in his absence, and when he got there and had the insight and foresight to do what he did, as you explained. Im sorry. Im trying to make the thing brief. I left out there was a section in my talk about a few years before baraka came back, and there was a Mass Movement and i was part of that student movement, and there were thousands of people who were meeting regularly, usually in protest meetings against ethnic cleansing which they called negro removal and thats what united the community that had different small groups had had important protests and the urban renewal or ethnic cleansing and negro removal formula woke everybody up, and everything from street hustlers to autoworkers to welfare mothers and tenant groups, was there a Mass Movement that baraka came back into. Strangely, he got anointed a leader because he got beat up by the police, and it was on the first day of the rebellion. Thats the first thing, and it was a strange convergence of all of these different factors of what happened in july 1967 that merged the National Black power conference which had already been planned with the north and trade rebellions and because of that fusion it created a new master narrative of black political power. So, yeah, i definitely didnt want to leave that out, and the c Fund Community council was in essence the grassroots leaders. As a matter of fact, the Research Suggests those people were active in the 1950s with the National Negro labor council. So i was trying to figure out when i went to the first meeting in 68 why everybody understood the rules of how the black Political Convention worked and it was only after doing our homework i found out that the oldest had been organizing since the 50s. So its a long struggle many, many leaders were involved in it. Well, just let me say one more thing on that. You left out a step, yes. That coalition did include people from that age group, but those of us who were involved in the urban renewal struggle were young people mostly coming from the younger organizations who were by the newark Planning Association and that was the first big coalition, that was the first step in the coalitions that i was talking about. Baraka didnt organize that. That came about in medical school fight and as i explained, we got specific. We won some specific things and then the next step was the united brothers and baraka called together some of us who had been involved in that urban renewal struggle and Police Struggle and others and took it to the next step. Thank you all. I want to ask one last question before we open this up to the q and a, but before i do that, i want to raise up one more name into the room in that we havent named who is George Richardson who is organizing for black political power in the city during the mid1960s or from the United Freedom ticket, looking at city and county level and state level offices putting together an Interracial Committee to organize and build political power who we dont want to leave out of this progression, as well. So just to cap this off in transition for q and a, and i want to ask the three of you from your participation and study of this era. What kind of lessons would you share with activists about engaging electoral politics in service of black liberation . Well, look, when we said black power naively we didnt realize that each class understood black power to be a different thing. So when people like gibson had been elected he thought black power had been achieved, okay . The people in the Tenant Movement who were suffering in Public Housing and going on rent strike understood that black power had not been achieved. So one of the things in terms of having these conventions and Political Movements is each sector of the community meneedso articulate what they mean by freedom now or black power and make sure thats on the table because its not i remember meeting with a black businessman from atlanta, georgia, who said he worked with dr. King, and i said well, what did you do . My father insured dr. Kings cards, you see what im saying . And im waiting for the other shoe to drop, right . The point was each class was santa saying words, but they mean Different Things and we have to be clear from the beginning. If you would risk your life and raise your money and do these things to elect these people that is understood what are they what are these concerns . What is that agenda . I would say with respect to the election aspect. I heard a young minister in some Radio Program and he was asked what he was going to vote on that and he was in his 30 aets and he sdeeded that he would vote because people were detrayed with the electionsed in past, therefore, he was going to keep organizing in the street, and i just wanted to say to him how foolish that sounds because you can do both. You to do both. Theres no point in just sitting around and letting the big house go to somebody who is definitely going keep you from organizing and keep beating you down and going to kill you, if they can, as opposed to using the street demonstrations as a punctuation mark to underline the faith that people put into those folks that we put into office. If for no other reason than to think that, well, our political objective is to have power, in this case, 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 someone who is against you. Thats just as relevant to what youre trying to do. So if nothing else, see organizing for elections as part of the reason for your being. You want to achieve a political objective so you have to do this one last thing to get the Playing Field a little more even. Now thats one of the things we talked about. We had a program which was it was factually june 16th to celebrate what the community did to elect ken gibson of which all of you were a part in one way or another as were we all involved with the website rise up newark. Com. I want people to take a look at that because weve had over a million hits. I stopped counting after that. Rise up newark. Com and in that in that particular twohour sessions that we had which was started out as we have here, but also went over to some of the other mass media events and we ended up with 18,000 people looking at what we call protests to power where we celebrated, not poohpoohed the people to change from street organizations, the small, unpredictable street organizations and the demonstrations and then to morph even further into election organizations, to put ken gibson into power. Now, what we were not able to do is to sustain that movement account. I dont think expect has herped how to keep politicians accountable. Nobody nobody does that. You dont stop doing it. You learn how to do that and you make the plan feel more even and that means you have to participate in the elections. Can i slide in right quick . I just want to say one thing about black women in this moment, this historical moment were talking about, as well. My vehicle into this history was actually student rebellion that happened at rutgers newark. I was researching for another public history not conference, but another public history project, and it was vicky donaldson. She was part of that conference, and shes this strong, powerful Freedom Fighter in this history that i was telling about race and rutgers and once i kind of saw her, you can see this black united front fighting for welfare reform when you talk about the tenants fighting the rich strikes and so many women, even when it came to urban renewal and it was a black woman who calls up her neighbors and says did the mayor tell you he tried to take her home and grab houses and i just had to give the psa that women are here fighting alongside everyone else, as well. Right. And the the the community is organizing the institutionses and the economic development. That Initiative Came from the grassroots and not from the fop. So although you were at the house breakinging and we saw gibson cut the ribbon for the Housing Project and take the credit for it. He look at me and says weigh do the work and the mayor comes in and takes the credit, but we cant have amnesia about who is doing the work otherwise the work wasnt get done. It is very important that all of those community instug, the african school, the newark school, the black youth organization, there were hundreds of organizations that thats the meat and potatoes for what happened in newark and when we came with a Million Dollar proposals to mayor gibson, he said prudential wouldnt be interested in that. We didnt know prudential was in the room. So we were trying to tell him all of those abandoned factory, if you look in brooklyn they turned them into the bedstuy restoration corporation, right . We went over there and tried to bring it to newark and he vetoed all of that. Disruption continued to be important because when the white vigilantes mobbed my construction workers at the towers, the community stormed into the City Council Meeting by the thousands to demand a Police Director. Lets remember, 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 so that all of these over and over against the Mass Movement and the power of disruption to say youre not going have this meeting unless these thousand voices are heard. That over and over again is a persistent thing that made progress in newark. Weeknights this month were featuring American History tv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan3. And tonight we look into pandemics and diseases. The 1918 flu pandemic altered American Life in ways familiar living through the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. The center for president ial history at Southern Methodist university in dallas hosts Christopher Mcknight nichols who recounts how the country experienced the events of a century ago and the lessons we might learn. Thats tonight at 8 00 eastern and enjoy American History tv this week and every weekend on cspan3. American history tv on cspan3, moring the people and events that tell the american story every weekend. Coming up this weekend, saturday at 2 00 p. M. Eastern, bestselling authors and Depaul University history professors Katherine Mooney and myles harvey talk about their fiction and nonfiction work. At 6 00 p. M. Eastern on the civil war, scott harting with, National Park historian discusses his research on the battle of antietam. On lectures in history, Patrick Allen discusses president Richard Nixon and his National Security adviser Henry Kissinger and their key Foreign Policy initiatives. On sunday at 2 00 p. M. Eastern, former u. S. Senator sam nunn reflects on the cold war 75 years later. Exploring the american story. Watch American History tv this weekend on cspan3. Up next on American History tv. University of minnesota professor sage matthew discusses how world war 1 affected africanamericans. She says that the promise of a better life because of military service in the war was largely denied by the reality of jim crow america. The National World war i museum and memorial in Kansas City Missouri hosted this talk. It lasts about an hour. Good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Thank you for coming to this session. Mi name is chad williams. Im professor of history and african and africanamerican studies at brandeis university. It is my great pleasure and honor to serve as chair for this session on africanamericans and the great war. Id like to first start off by thanking the program committee, specially kimball for allowing this opportunity to put this session together. I want to give a big thanks to the entire executive board especially executive secretary silvia cyrus and certainly last, but not least, president evelyn brooks higgenbotham for her leadership and support for this conference and this Plenary Session in particular. The theme for this years conference recognizes the centennial of the end of the First World War. The war would define the 20th century and still continues to reverberate today. Modernity in its most destructive form. The war shattered empires, fractured nations and destroyed old ideas of progress, enlightenment and civilization. Over 20 Million People died between 1914 and 1918 and millions more after 1918 as the fires lit by the war continued to burn. World war i is traditionally cast as a european affair. Frequently minimized, or excluded altogether is the impact of the war on peoples of african descent and after can americans in particular. The great war transformed black america. An argument can be made that the First World War was the seminal event for africanamericans in the 20th century. One that set the course of black social, political and Economic Life to its aftermath and the present. When