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The Newark Experience

The Newark "Riots"

Planning, Slum Clearance and the Road to Crisis in Newark.
David Levitus. Looks at how Newark politics and policies of the 1940s and 1950s contributed to the conditions that resulted in the riots of 1967.
Application to the Department of Housing and Urban Development for a Grant to Plan a Comprehensive City Demonstration Program [Part IA]. April 1967.
Includes a description of Newark as summited as part of a Model Cities grant application. Available?
New Jersey and the Near Collapse of Civic Culture: Reflections on the Summer of 1967
Clement Price. Speech delivered at the Commencement of the Rutgers Graduate School of Social Work, May 14, 2007.
Summer of Rage: An Oral History of the 1967 Newark and Detroit Riots
Max Arthur Herman. New York, Peter Lang, 2013
Study based on 100 oral history interviews conducted in Newark and Detroit during 2001-2009. Available?
Fighting in the Streets: Ethnic Succession and Urban Unrest in Twentieth-Century America.
Max Arthur Herman. Peter Lang, 2005.
Comparative analysis of the major incidents of 20th century urban unrest in the U.S., including the 1967 riots in Newark and Detroit. Available?
"Violence in Newark,"
Paul J. Scheips. IN The Role of Federal Military Forces in Domestic Disorders, 1945-1992. Washington, D.C., Center of Military History, 2005, pp. 173-177. Available?
"The Occupation of Newark,"
Tom Hayden. New York Review of Books 9(3), August 24, 1967, 14-24.
Contemporary account of the riots.
Dana Call Number: Periodical, Shelved by Title Available?
Rebellion in Newark: Official Violence and Ghetto Response.
Tom Hayden. New York, Vintage Books, 1967. Available? Other Edition
"What Really Happened with LeRoi Jones in Newark"
Ronald Porambo. The Realist 82, September 1968, pp. 5-10, 14.Available?
No Cause for Indictment: An Autopsy of Newark.
Ron Porambo. Hoboken, N.J., Melville House, 2007.
Re-issue of journalist Ron Porambo's in-depth study of the riots and their aftermath. Based on extensive interviews. With an new introduction by Warren Slout and an afterward by Fred Bruning. Available?
No Cause for Indictment: An Autopsy of Newark.
Ron Porambo. New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971. Available?
Social Psychological Determinants of Minority Uprising: A Comparison of the Nat Turner Slave Rebellion (1831) and the Newark Riot (1967)
Corrie S. Hope. (Ph.D. Thesis). University of Massachusetts, 1975.
"This study analyzes the ways in which relative deprivation as mediated by specific intervening variables determine the occurrence of minority uprisings." Rutgers-restricted Access
"Race Riots of 1967: An Analysis of Police Violence in Detroit and Newark,"
Albert Bergesen. Journal of Black Studies 12(3), March 1982, 261-274.
Examines the specific circumstances of death for each person killed during the 1967 Detroit and Newark riots. Rutgers-restricted Access
Urban Race Riots.
Introduction by Michael R. Belknap. New York, Garland Pub., 1991.
A volume of the Civil Rights, the White House, and the Justice Department, 1945-1968 series. Chronological arrangement of a wide range of documents (memos, letters, speeches, papers) dealing with the Detroit and Newark riots.
Not owned by the Rutgers Libraries
Collective Violence and the Culture of Subordination: A Study of Participants in the July 1967 Riots in Newark, New Jersey, and Detroit, Michigan. Rutgers-restricted access
Jeffrey M. Paige. Thesis (Ph. D.), University of Michigan, 1968. Available?
"Political Orientation and Riot Participation,"
Jeffrey M. Paige. American Sociological Review 36(5), October 1971, 810-820.
Based on a survey of 237 black males in Newark, analyzes the relationship between political trust, political efficacy, and riot participation. Rutgers-restricted Access
"The Trial of Leroi Jones,"
Louise Campbell. IN Cities Fit to LIve in and How We Can Make Them Happen. New York, Macmillan Company, 1971. pp. 21-25. Available?
"Up Against the Wall, Motherfucker": The History of a Phrase
Bill Freind. Canadian Review of American Studies 54(3), December 2024, pp. 302-321.
"During Amiri Baraka’s sentencing in 1967 for possessing an illegal weapon, Judge Leon Kapp read parts of Baraka’s poem “Black People!” including the line “[t]he magic words are: Up against the wall motherfucker!” This quickly became one of the most powerful phrases of the 1960s...." Rutgers-restricted Access
"Harvesting the Crisis: The Newark Uprising, the Kerner Commission, and Writings on Riots."
Kevin Mumford. IN African American Urban History Since World War II. Edited by Kenneth L. Kusmer and Joe W. Trotter. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2009. Chapter 10: pp. 203-209.
"This essay explores how various observers and experts described the motivation of 'riot participants' and how they interpreted the nature of the conflict." Available?
Newark: A History of Race, Rights, and Riots in America.
Kevin J. Mumford. New York, New York University Press, 2007. Available?
Kevin Mumford Interview
Podcast. February 2008 interview with Mumford about his new book, Newark. A History of Race, Rights and Riots in America.
From Zion to Brick City: What's Going On?: Newark and the Legacy of the Sixties.
Linda Caldwell Epps. Thesis (D. Litt.), Drew University, 2010. Available?
"Newark to New Orleans: The Myth of the Black Sniper,"
James Ridgeway & Jean Casella. MotherJones, July 16, 2007.
Containment: The Architecture of the 1967 Newark Riots.
Sean Patrick Dockray. 1999.
Using six newspapers as primary sources, Dockray examines the riots from an architectural point of view and concludes that "the rioting only began as such when a series of institutions defined certain actions as a "riot" and launched a complex struggle over the definition of space." Research supported by the Institute for Advanced Architecture

Flier

Stop Police Brutality: Mass Rally Tonite
Hand-printed flier for July 13, 1967 rally at the 4th Precinct station. Newark Public Library Digital Collections.

Looking Back

New Jersey Online: Affective Histories in Newark's Digital Archives
Shannon Mooney. New Jersey Studies 7(2), July 2021, pp. 132-158.
"This article examines two digital archives, Old Newark and the Newark Public Library’s My Newark Story, to explore how emotion is used by individuals and institutions to narrate Newark’s 1967 riots and the city’s subsequent waves of white flight, immigration, and systemic neglect."
Book TV: No Cause for Indictment: The Explosive Story of the Newark Riots
New Jersey Historical Society panal discussion, July 11, 2007. Panel: Fred Bruning, Sally Carrol, Robert Curvin, Danny Schechter, and Leonard Weinglass.
[On 40th Anniversary of the Newark Rebellion, A Look Back]
Democracy Now broadcast on July 13, 2007.