The 40th Anniversary of the "Battle of Newark" (July 12 to July 17)
Friday, July 13, 2007
photo by Don Hogan Charles/The New York Times
National Guardsmen wielding rifles with bayonets advanced along Springfield Avenue in Newark on July 14, 1967. Twenty-three people were killed and 700 injured in rioting.
Local men assigned to the Woodbury and Pitman Guard units were among those who fought in the "Battle of Newark".
(New York Times) There are no public monuments to mark the episode that painted Newark as a national symbol of racial disparity, police brutality and urban despair, but there is a newfound willingness here to confront the past. City officials, who ignored previous anniversaries, will dedicate a plaque Thursday at the Fourth Precinct station house, where the first skirmishes erupted between residents and the police.
“It’s still a touchy and contentious subject, but the fact that there is dialogue taking place is highly positive and would not have happened 10 years ago,” said Max Herman, a sociology professor at Rutgers University who has collected 100 oral histories about those five calamitous days. “I think for the first time Newark feels secure enough to turn back and look its history straight in the eye.”
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