The Newark Experience

Rise Up Newark

The history of Newark's African American communities (and the ethnic groups with which they interacted) up to 1970. Illustrated with a rich collection of primary documents, including digitized photographs, letters, speeches, maps, videos, oral histories, etc.

Employment Practices in Selected Retail Stores

Marion L. Courtney. Trenton, New Jersey Department of Education, Division Against Discrimination, December 1956.

Survey of sixty-four retail stores in Newark, East Orange, Montclair, Bloomfield, Paterson, Passaic, Elizabeth, Plainfield, Trenton, Camden and Atlantic City. Focuses on minority, especially African-American, employment but also includes statistics on the employment of Jews and Italian-Americans.

Group Relations in Newark, 1957: Problems, Prospects and a Program for Research.

Chester Rapkin, Eunice Grier, and George Grier. Prepared for the Mayor's Commission on Group Relations. New York, 1957. Available?

Newark: A City in Transition

Market Planning Corporation. Newark, N.J., 1959. 3 volumes.

Prepared for the Mayor's Commission on Group Relations. Vol. 1: The Characteristics of the Population. Vol. 2: Resident's Views on Inter-Group Relations and Statistical Tables. Vol. 3: Summary and Recommendations. Available?

Securing Equality : The Operation of the Laws of New Jersey Concerning Racial Discrimination

New Jersey Commission on Civil Rights. 1964

"The study of minority groups was focused upon the Negro. The Law School, through the cooperation of Rutgers Urban Studies Center, was fortunate in obtaining the services of Leonard Zeitz, a sociologist and cultural anthropologist, who designed and supervised a depth study of Negro attitudes toward law, lawyers, legal processes and the law relating to discrimination. The students in Social Legislation, second and third year law students at Rutgers, conducted many of the 130 depth interviews of Negro residents of the south side of Newark in December 1963 and January 1964. Professor Zeitz's article, explaining and evaluating the research, is the third part of this study. His findings will be utilized throughout this study as a basis for evaluating the behavior of governmental agencies."

"The Black Experience in Newark: The Growth of the Ghetto, 1870, 1970."

Kenneth T. Jackson and Barbara B. Jackson. IN New Jersey Since 1860: New Findings and Interpretations. Edited by William C. Wright. Trenton, New Jersey Historical Commission, 1972. 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.

"Ae 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?

Legitimized Blackness? Kwanzaa, Citizenship, and Newark

Reniqua Allen. Western Journal of Black Studies 37(4), Winter 2013, pp. 272-284.

"This paper explores the history of Kwanzaa in Newark, New Jersey, examining how some of the first Kwanzaas were celebrated, the role the holiday has played in legitimizing "blackness," and also the significance and impact that the holiday has had on members of the community." Rutgers-restricted Access

Newark: A History of Race, Rights, and Riots in America

Kevin J. Mumford. New York, New York University Press, 2007. Available?

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?

The Persistent Minority: The Black Political Experience in NewarkRutgers-restricted access

Robert Curvin. Thesis (Ph.D), Princeton University, 1975.

Looks at Kenneth Gibson's first term as Newark mayor (1970-1974); concludes that "the lack of substantial change during Gibson's first term is rooted in economic, political, and social structure that operates to protect the status quo, the wealth of the already affluent, and the position and control of those already in power...More specifically, this study attempts to show how a pluralistic society works, over time, to thwart the goals of an oppressed group, even when it becomes a 'majority' in a given jurisdiction." Avaiable?

The Making of the New Ark: Imamu Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), the Newark Congress of African People, and the Modern Black Convention Movement: A History of the Black Revolt and the New Nationalism, 1966-1976Rutgers-restricted access

Komozi Woodard. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1991. Available?

"It's Nation Time in NewArk: Amiri Baraka and the Black Power Experiments in Newark, New Jersey,"

Komozi Woodard. IN Freedom North: Black Freedom Struggles Outside the South, 1940-1980. Edited by Jeanne Theoharis and Komozi Woodard. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, pp. 287-311. Available?

Unfinished Agenda: Urban Politics in the Era of Black PowerRutgers-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?

Islam Among Urban Blacks: Muslims in Newark, New Jersey: A Social History

Michael Nash. Lanham, Md. University Press of America, 2008. Available?

Noble Drew Ali and the Moorish Science Temple: A Study in Race, Gender, and African American Religion, 1913-1930

Stephanie Ann Wilms. Ph.D Thesis. University of California Riverside, 2014.

Narrating Muslim Masculinities: The Fruit of Islam and the Quest for Black Redemption

Zain Abdullah. Spectrum: A Journal on Black Men 1(1), Autumn 2012, pp. 141-177.

"During the modern Civil Rights and Black Nationalist movements, struggles for racial equality were represented by a quest for manhood...And the Fruit [of Islam] in cities like Newark symbolized the presence of a new Black manhood...This article presents an exploration of masculinist performances, or more specifically how the Fruit of Islam displayed different kinds of masculinities, and the role these practices played in the Black struggle toward liberation and redemption." Based on eight life histories of former members of Newark's Temple No. 25. Rutgers-restricted Access

Narrative of the Krueger-Scott Mansion Project: Constructing Newark History

Katie Singer. New Jersey Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 3(1), 2017, pp.151-176.

Newark, New Jersey’s once proposed Krueger-Scott African-American Cultural Center (KSAACC) tells a story of history, economy, race, built environment, and much more. The Center’s development mirrors other urban stories with regard to race, preservation, urban failure, and memory, while also offering a unique understanding of Newark’s own history...The KSAACC was met with and has continued to receive resistance from some of Newark’s citizens as well as local journalists and ultimately the very politicians who had at first supported the idea...This paper is about the creation of African-American historical knowledge and the ways America sees fit to make it public knowledge."

Social Mix in U.S. Suburbs: Organized and Informal Interventions in Response to Black Settlement

Laura Pangallozzi. Thesis (Ph.D), New Brunswick, N.J., Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, 2014.

"This project considers the political, social, and cultural geography of black settlement in the inner suburbs of Newark between approximately 1970 and 2010." Available?

When I was Comin' Up: An Oral History of Aged Blacks.

Compiled by Audrey Olsen Faulkner. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1982.

"Life histories of elderly black people in Newark, N.J. from tape recorded reminiscences collected as a project of the Rutgers Graduate School of Social Work." Available?

We Came and Stayed: Coyt Jones/Ras Baraka

Video mingling an interview with Coyt Jones, the father of poet and activist Leroi Jones/Amiri Baraka, from the 1990s with an interview with his grandson, Ras Baraka, the current mayor of Newark. Jones came to Newark from South Carolina in 1927. First of a series of stories about families who migrated to Newark scheduled to appear in Newest Americans, a new (Spring 2015) "experiment in collaborative storytelling" from the Rutgers University-Newark Center on Migration and the Global City and the Rutgers University-Newark Department of Arts, Culture and Media.

"Ordinary Miseries,"

Helen M. Stummer. Society 24(3), March/April 1987, 83-

Photo essay. Daily life in Newark's Central Ward in the 1980s. Available?

No Easy Walk: The Central Ward.

Helen M. Stummer. Exhibit curated by Thalia Doukas. Newark, N.J., City Without Walls, 1988. Available?

No Easy Walk: Newark, 1980-1993

Helen M. Stummer. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994.

Photo essay, covering over a ten-year span, focusing on one family living in Newark's Central Ward. Available?

Photographer Helen Stummer has been documenting the lives of the poorest of the poor in Newark since the early 1980s. In addition to the above publications, she also has a number of photo collections online:

Photos from the Newark Project
Watching Children Grow
How Children Play
Rest in Peace: Urban Caring and Grieving
322 Irvine Turner Boulevard
The Demolition of 322 Irvine Turner Boulevard (1997)

"Talkin' Bout a Crisis: The History of Black Newark. An Interview with Clement Price,"

Blue Newark Culture 1990, 28-45. Available?

Journeying: Black Girlhood, Movement and the Refusal of (In)Justice

Jomaira Salas Pujols. (Ph.D. Thesis), Rutgers The State University of New Jersey, 2022.

"This study advances sociological research by analyzing how Black girls draw on their movement through urban space to identify and challenge injustice. Using ethnographic methods, I trace how 45 multi-ethnic Black girls in the New York City Metro area move between and navigate four formal and informal educational spaces: homes, schools, social media, and the Sadie Nash Leadership Project, an afterschool program that fosters critical consciousness and activism among youth of color in New York City and Newark, NJ. My findings reveal that high school-aged Black girls routinely navigate multiple spaces of advantage and disadvantage and that their movement between these spaces offers them the opportunity to encounter and make sense of inequality." NOTE: At the request of the author this thsis is not available to view until May 26 2024.

The Political Spaces of Black Women in the City: Identity, Agency, and the Flow of Social Capital in Newark, NJ.

Kellie Darice Wilson. Ph.D. Thesis, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, 2007.

"This project explores U.S. Black women's participation in social networks that enable political mobilizations in Newark, NJ." Available?

"The Effects of Centralized Government Authority on Black and Latino Political Empowerment"

Domingo Morel. Political Research Quarterly 69(2), June 2016, pp. 347-360.

"To assess the effects of centralized government on political empowerment among racial minorities, this article examines how state takeovers of local school districts have affected black and Latino descriptive representation on local school boards. Using an original dataset of state takeovers of local school districts from 1989 to 2013, as well as case study analysis of Newark, New Jersey, this article shows that centralization affects communities differently according to the level of political empowerment they have at the time of centralization." Rutgers-restricted Access

"Becoming American, Becoming Black? Urban Competency, Racialized Spaces, and the Politics of Citizenship among Brazilian and Puerto Rican Youth in Newark,"

Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 14, 2007, 85-109.

"This essay examines the performance of 'race,' particularly the appropriation of 'Blackness,' among U.S.-born Latinos and Latin American migrants in two neighborhoods in Newark, New Jersey." Available? Rutgers-restricted Access

"Can't I Be Seen? Can't I Be Heard? Black Women Queering Politics in Newark"

Zenzele Isoke. Gender, Place and Culture 21(3), 2014, pp. 353-369.

"I explore how black women embraced a set of oppositional spatial practices to resist the intersectional effects of misogyny, homo/transphobia, racism, and poverty in Newark, New Jersey. I reconstruct the creation of the Newark Pride Alliance, a local lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and queer coalition that mobilized in 2003 and 2004, after the death of Sakia Gunn. Exploring migrations between ‘black women,’ ‘black queer’ and ‘black feminist,’ I examine how black women respatialized social capital and enacted resistance." Rutgers-restricted Access

Invisible Pathways: Entrepreneurship by Queer Women of Color in Newark

Kristyn Scorsone. Thesis (M.A.), Rutgers University Newark, May 2017.

"This thesis challenges ideas about gentrification and queer economic power by examining the oral histories of queer women of color who are engaged in entrepreneurial endeavors in the city of Newark, New Jersey."

Dreams Deferred: the Sakia Gunn Film Project

"A documentary on the events surrounding the death of Sakia Gunn, a 15-year old African American lesbian who was fatally stabbed in gay hate crime in Newark, New Jersey. The film includes the court hearing, arguments presented by both sides regarding the victim and the accused, and the sentencing." Rutgers-restricted Access

Nobody Knows Her Name: Making Sakia Legible

Kiana Green. Thinking Gender Papers. UCLA Center for the Study of Women, 2009.

Examines "how the narrative of Sakia Gunn’s death, as exemplified by the 2008 documentary film, Dreams Deferred: The Sakia Gunn Project, participates in a tradition of politicizing Black death while also exposing that very tradition of political death, as, ironically, the very cultural formation that allows the Gunn murder to remain unknown in U.S. public culture."

Interrogating Diasporic Identity and Media Distribution Flows, Reception Practices, and Video Film Interpretations of Nollywood Audiences in Newark, New Jersey

Kaia Niambi Shivers. Thesis (Ph.D.). Rutgers University New Brunswick, 2015

"This dissertation examines how the distribution, consumption, and interpretation of “Nollywood” contribute to identity among African-Americans, Africans, and Afro-Caribbeans who live, work, or socialize in Newark, New Jersey. It also shows how the influx of movies from Nigeria and Ghana changes the media landscape of a city that has a place identity of being a 'black city.'"

The Newark Public Library has digitized their African American Newark Newspapers collection. The collection consists of individual issues of African-American newspapers published in Newark, including the Newark Herald, Advance, Herald Advance and New Jersey Herald News published from the 1930s to the 1960s.

The above collection does not include the New Jersey Afro-American, which was published in Newark from 1941 to 1988. Newark Public has the newspaper on microfilm, as does the Rutgers Alexander Library in New Brunswick.

Under the leadership of Leroi Jones / Amiri Baraka, the four newspapers in this collection – Black News, Black New Ark, Black Newark, and Unity and Struggle– were published between 1968 and 1979. The Rutgers Dana Library Newark Black Newspapers Collection is now digitized and searchable.

The Krueger-Scott Oral History Collection

Audio files of over 100 interviews with African American Newarkers who had migrated to the city between 1910-1970, as well as those whose local roots spanned generations. Interviews were conducted in 1995-1999 as a project of the Krueger-Scott Cultural Center.

Krueger Scott Transcripts

The Newark Public Library has transcripts of the Krueger Scott interviews; a number of them are available as part of the Newark Public Library Digital Collections.

Newark (N.J.) African Americans Collection, 1821-1988.
0.42 linear ft. ( 1 Hollinger box). "Articles (Portions of I.F. xeroxed - mostly biographical information from newspapers), Ashby, William (Manuscript of autobiography, "A Morning in Hell," newspaper clippings, etc.), Baraka, Amiri (Newspaper articles), Black Power Conference (Newspaper articles, 1967, forms, press releases, speeches, stickers, etc.), Blacks (Black History Week, Dr. M. Burch honored, 1977, Journal; phamplets; Essex County College, Black History Week Festival, ECCO Supplement, 1980; Black History Month, Proclamation, 1981; Black History Exhibit: "Deep Are Our Roots,"1984, Newark City Hall; Harold Gibson, program; The Francis W. Harper Literary Soc; Material on Cutjoe Banquantue & others, etc.), "Letters to My Father: A Late Correspondence with Harrison M. Sayre (1894-1935), Founder of My Weekly Reader" by Robert E. Sayre, Moorish Science Temple (Material drawn from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, gift of J. Teague, Irvington, N.J.), People of Color Newark 1821 (from tax ratables),"
Newark Public Library Call Number: Main N.J. Ref. MG NWK AFAM Coll (Main)

Listings of African Americans from the Newark City Directories, 1869-1889.
0.42 linear ft. ( 1 Hollinger box). "This collection consists of a copy of listings of African Americans from the Newark City Directories from 1869 to 1889."
Newark Public Library Call Number: Main N.J. Ref. MG NWK African Americans (Main)

See the Amiri Baraka & the Black Power Movement page.

Click on the subject keywords below to search the Rutgers Catalog:

African Americans - New Jersey - Newark