Growing Up in Newark, New Jersey

 

By Steve Halpern

I was born and raised in the city of Newark, New Jersey. I lived in the southern section of the city known as Weekquahic. The author Philip Roth was also raised in this area and wrote about it in several of his novels. In Roth’s day, the Weekquahic section of the city was overwhelmingly Jewish. I lived in this area during the transition from a Jewish community to a predominantly African American community. The musical group known as the Temptations described this transition in their song Ball of Confusion. 

“People moving out. People moving in. Why? Because of the color of their skin.”

Newark, like cities throughout the country, is surrounded by relatively affluent suburban communities like Maplewood and Livingston. This disparity of wealth was reflected in a gross disparity in funding for education.

That disparity of funding was made illegal in the 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka. Then by the year 1974, the Supreme Court effectively reversed the Brown decision in their Miliken v. Bradley decision. This legalized gross disparities in funding for education between the cities and suburban communities. 

However, the State Supreme Court of New Jersey didn’t go along with this inequality. In their Abbott v. Burke decision, the court ordered the state government to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into the least affluent school districts. 

The state government decided not to take this money from the most affluent people in the state. Instead, they raised property taxes. This meant that residents of the state who had been discriminated against would be required to pay to fix the problem.  

I attended Maple Avenue elementary school and then Arts High that is located near the downtown area of Newark. My first year at Arts High was 1967, the same year as the so-called summer “riots” in the city. The National Guard responded by murdering 24 people, including three children. I believe that the reasons for what I call the 1967 Rebellion in Newark are important to understand.

Many of the Black people who lived in the Newark of my early years came from the southern states where Jim Crow segregation was the law. In the Great Migration millions of Black people escaped those horrendous conditions for a chance of a better life in the northern states. In those years, Northern New Jersey was an industrial center and there were many jobs available for anyone who wanted to work.

Isabel Wilkerson wrote her book The Warmth of Other Suns about this Great Migration. In that book Wilkerson observed that immigrants leave areas where they don’t want to be and move to an area where they aren’t wanted. So, while black people had more rights in the north, they also experienced systematic discrimination with respect to employment, and housing. The issue that sparked the rebellion in Newark and many other cities was a protest against routine and vicious police brutality.  

The rebellion in Newark, as well as in numerous cities throughout the country forced the establishment to make several basic changes with respect to employment, housing, and education. As a result, many Black people won opportunities they never had in the past. However, all Black people continued to experience vicious discrimination. Evidence of this erupted in the Black Lives Matter demonstrations of 2020.

The 1967 rebellion in Newark sparked many changes in the city. Ken Gibson became one of the first Black mayors in the country. By 1970 and 1971 the teacher’s union of Newark went on strike.

I attended Arts High during the time of the teachers strike. In this climate, my classmates began to organize our own classes and raised our own demands. We wanted the same kind of facilities as the suburban schools. I marched with my classmates to demonstrate in front of City Hall in my first demonstration. I was afraid to continue with the demonstration in a sit in at the Board of Education. 

Our main leader was Lawrence Hamm. Larry continues the struggle for human rights in an organization he started called People’s Organization for Progress (POP).

During these same years, masses of people protested the war against Vietnam. Before that war, most people in this country glorified the armed forces. During the course of the war about 80% of the population became convinced to oppose the horror organized in an attempt to destroy Vietnam.

How all this affected me

My first home was on Seymore Avenue. That home was destroyed to make way for a highway called Rout 78. Routs 78, and 280 were designed to connect the suburban communities to the Big Apple, New York city.

I was reminded of the Newark rebellions every day I went to school. Unlike other cities, people who had financial resources refused to rebuild Newark and Detroit after the rebellions. So, every day I went to Arts High I took a bus that went down Bergen Street and then Springfield Avenue. There I saw storefront after storefront of burned-out rubble. As a teenager I thought this was normal. However, I also knew that there was a completely different reality in the suburban communities.

My father had an unusual way of making a living. He graduated from West Side high school and was a star athlete. He gravitated to teaching tennis and golf. So, from an early age I learned the game of tennis.

I was never better than an above average player. However, in inner-city Newark I was the best player on our team for four years. 

A turning point in my life came when someone from Livingston high school invited me to play with him at his school. Arts High was located between the old and now destroyed housing projects, and the downtown area. The school was old and, in many ways, falling apart.  

Livingston high school was located about 100 yards from the street surrounded by manicured lawns and trees. The school not only had tennis courts, but also had a football field, a baseball field, and a swimming pool. 

I found the contrast between these two schools to be stunning. Then I started to think. This gross disparity in funding for education wasn’t happening because policy makers were stupid or insensitive. No, this had to do with the fact that there was something fundamentally wrong with the nation where I lived. 

In this same nation, teachers asked me to stand up, place my hand on my heart, and pledge allegiance to the flag. This pledge included the words, “liberty and justice for all.” 

At this time, the government also required me to register for the draft. This was to participate in a war against Vietnam when no Vietnamese person ever hurt me in any way. Yes, there was something clearly wrong with this arrangement.

So, while I sensed how there were profound problems in the world, at that time I didn’t know how to express myself. While I was an above average student, the book the Godfather, by Mario Puzo was the first book I read from cover to cover in my senior year of high school.

Like most students, I found most of the courses I was required to take were alienating. I found math and science to be interesting but didn’t pursue studying. I only really gravitated to sports.

Then, for about a year, I went to Livingston College where I met professors who gave me books to read that I found interesting. More accurately, those books gave me the evidence I needed to understand how most of what I learned in high school was a lie. While I was beginning to gain a perspective, I still was barely able to communicate my ideas. 

So, for the past fifty years, I worked in factories, as a housekeeper in hospitals, and currently I’m a school bus driver. I’ve also participated in the movements protesting the war against Vietnam, apartheid in South Africa, and the current Israeli organized genocide against Palestinians. As you might surmise by this presentation, I’ve also learned to write.

Today, I can credit a part of who I am from my earliest experiences in Newark, New Jersey. I learned of the beauty of the people of the city, who weren’t treated very well by those who hold power. In spite all the problems, the people of Newark have found ways to persevere and continue the struggle for human dignity for all. That is what I learned from my years in Newark, New Jersey.