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The Newark Experience

1960s and Beyond

The Fixers: Devolution, Development, and Civil Society in Newark, 1960-1990
Julia Rabig. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2016
"Understanding how some individuals and organizations in the complex and vibrant landscape of 1960s activism came to act as fixers illuminates two intertwined developments that shaped twentieth-century US history: the uneven political incorporation of black Americans and the evolution of the urban crisis...To understand why fixers emerged in the late 1960s and what distinguishes them, we must first understand the problems they promised to address, problems that Newark shared with many other cities around the country but that were also exacerbated by New Jersey’s particular history of localism and suburban expansion." Available?
Broken Deal: Devolution, Development and Civil Society in Newark, New Jersey, 1960-1990. Rutgers-restriced access
Julia Rabig. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 2007.
"This dissertation explores the enduring conflicts over race, federalism, and local self-determination in postwar U.S. cities through the experience of Newark, New Jersey...Newark's residents and their suburban neighbors mounted imaginative challenges to the city's decline, many of which resonated nationally among policymakers and residents of similarly distressed cities." Available?
Urban Renewal Politics: Slum Clearance in Newark.
Harold Kaplan. New York, N.Y., Columbia University, 1963.
Focuses on the Newark Housing Authority and how they launched nine slum projects during the first 10 years of Title 1 of the 1949 Federal Housing Act. Looks at urban renewal as a political process. Available?
"Ethnic and Group Voting in Nonpartisan Municipal Elections,"
Gerald Pomper. Public Opinion Quarterly 30, Spring 1966, 79-97.
Analyzes the voting patterns in two Newark elections: the municipal nonpartison election of 1962 and the State Assembly contest of 1961. Results suggest that ethnic identification is a major factor in nonpartison elections. Rutgers-restricted Access
The End of Coalition: The Failure of Community Organizing in Newark in the 1960s Rutgers-restricted access
David Milton Gerwin. Thesis (Ph.D), Columbia University, 1998.
Looks at how the dynamic of urban decline defeated attempts to organize traditional neighborhood-based groups and organized labor into a coalition under the Newark Community Union Project, one of ten community organizing projects sponsored by the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in 1963-64. Available?
"Newark: Negroes Move Toward Power,"
John O'Shea. The Atlantic 216(5), November 1965, 90-92, 97-98.
"Newark, the state's wealthiest and most influential city, is now in transition from white to Negro political control."
Dana Call Number: Periodical, Shelved by Title Available?
Unfinished Agenda: Urban Politics in the Era of Black Power Rutgers-restricted access
Junius W. Williams. Berkeley, North Atlantic, 2014.
Junius Williams, Founder and Director Emeritus of the Rutgers Newark based Abbott Leadership Institute, has written a compelling memoir about coming of age in the Civil Rights and Black Power era, with lessons from his Movement experiences in political organizing, as well as a political history of Newark. Available?
"City and Suburb,"
Leonard A. Cole. IN Blacks in Power: A Comparative Study of Black and White Elected Officials. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1976, pp. 154-191.
Looks at the impact of elected black officials on specific municipal issues in six large cities and ten suburban communities in New Jersey. City section largely focuses on Newark. Available?
"Organizing Neighborhoods: Gary and Newark,"
Richard J. Krickus. Dissent 19(1), 1972, 107-117. Reprinted in: The World of the Blue-Collar Worker. Edited by Irving Howe. New York, Quadrangle Books, 1972, pp. 72-88.
Focuses on Steve Adubato's successful campaign for district leadership in Newark's Italian North Ward against the Democratic party machine.
Dana Call Number: Periodical, Shelved by Title/NEWARK HD8072 .H88 1972 Available?
Adubato the Struggler: White Ethnicity and the (Re)construction of Selfhood.
Brian E. Hohmann. M.A. Thesis, Rutgers University, 2010. Available?
"Class and Ethnic Political Relations in Newark, New Jersey: Blacks and Italians,"
Gwendolyn Mikell. IN Cities of the United States: Studies in Urban Anthropology. Edited by Leith Mullings. New York, Columbia University Press, 1987, pp. 71-98.
"A case study of Newark, New Jersey, where ethnic conflict, characteristic of the late 1960s and early 1970s, has its roots in the historical class development and in interethnic relations since 1900. As economic conditions changed in the mid-1970s, allowing for the penetration of professionals into public and private bureaucracies, the competition between blacks and Italians was tempered." Available?
From Riot to Recovery : Newark After Ten Years
Compiled and edited by Stanley B. Winters. Washington : University Press of America, c1979. Available?

"Newark, Crime and Politics in a Declining City,"
Dorothy H. Guyot. IN Crime in City Politics. Edited by Anne Heinz, Herbert Jacob, Robert L. Lineberry. New York, Longman, 1983, pp. 23-96. Available?
Race and State in the Urban Regime
Domingo Morel. Urban Affairs Review 54(3), May 2018, pp. 490-523
Relying on a case study of Newark, New Jersey, this article argues that the increasing presence of state government in local affairs was a response to the growth of Black political empowerment. Furthermore, the Newark case reveals that the changing role of state actors, particularly governors, in urban regimes requires an expansion of urban regime theory as a conceptual framework. Rutgers-restricted Access

National Hip Hop Political Convention

Live, From Newark: The National Hip Hop Political Convention
Niamo Mu'id. Socialism and Democracy 18 (2), July 2004, pp. 221-229.
The the first National Hip Hop Political Convention was held in Newark from Wednesday June 16 through Saturday June 19, 2004. The meeting included delegates from 20 states that put forth a five point agenda national agenda that listed the issues and political demands of the Hip Hop Generation. Rutgers-restricted Access

Anything Else?

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Newark N.J. Politics Government