The Daily Newarker

NJ.com has launched a portal called “Newark 1967″:http://www.nj.com/newark1967/ covering the summer of discontent in the city of Newark that began with the riots on July 12, forty years ago. They’re featuring research, upcoming events, video interviews, and a four-part series of articles entitled “Crossroads.” Here’s an excerpt from “part one of the series”:http://blog.nj.com/ledgernewark/2007/07/crossroads_part_1.html

He thought it was some kind of providence, the perfect confluence of a man, a time and a place.

The man was David Suchow, a 37-year-old pharmacist. The time was 1955. The place was the corner of Springfield Avenue and Bergen Street in Newark, where Suchow had just been given the opportunity to buy a pharmacy, Post Drugs, for no money down and a reasonable monthly payment.

To Suchow, it looked like a future. The location was in the middle of a two-mile-long commercial corridor stretching from Newark’s downtown to its outskirts. In the days before shopping malls, Springfield Avenue was what shopping malls later would aspire to be.

“It was a hustling, bustling area,” said Suchow, now 89 and living in Hunterdon County. “Back in my day, we called it action. It had great action, a lot of foot traffic.”

What he couldn’t know in those optimistic times was just how quickly the action was changing. A little more than a decade later, Suchow’s corner and the blocks around it were the epicenter of one of the most severe civil disturbances in American history, a spasm of racially steeped violence and destruction that began one hot July evening in 1967 and ended five days later with 26 deaths and $10 million in damage.

As the city prepares to mark the 40th anniversary of the event, The Star-Ledger is examining the Newark riots from the vantage point of the neighborhood around Springfield and Bergen. Today and for the next three days, more than 50 years of the area’s history will be revisited – from gilded commercial strip to riot-shredded shell, then from vacated inner-city wasteland to urban-redevelopment success story.

Drawing on thousands of pages of documents recently discovered in State Police headquarters, four decades of scholarly research, and the living memory of dozens who crossed through the neighborhood, this four-part series will debunk some popular myths. Among them:

* The riots were responsible for the decline that turned Newark into one of America’s most desperate cities. In reality, the city had long been in a downward spiral which by 1967 created an atmosphere ripe for unrest.
* The riots were sparked by a rumor that cabdriver John Smith had been beaten to death by police. In fact, the serious looting didn’t begin until nearly 24 hours later, when a rally staged by community activists got out of hand. By that point, the rumor of Smith’s death had already been dispelled.
* The riots caused most businesses along Springfield Avenue to immediately close. To the contrary, 83 percent of businesses in the riot area reopened. They shuttered in the coming months and years when owners realized their suburban customers were too scared to return.

The series also will reveal some never-before-reported details about the disorders. Among them:

* Mayor Hugh Addonizio did not want to call in the State Police and National Guard, going so far as to cancel a request from his police department for assistance. But a report of looting at Sears Roebuck, which sold guns, forced his hand.
* The “Soul Brother riots,” when rogue members of the State Police shot hundreds of windows owned by black businessmen, appear to have been planned to coincide with a press conference, a time when most reporters and photographers were not on the streets to observe the troopers’ behavior.
* The sniper fire, on which many of the 26 riot deaths were blamed, was mainly gunfire from authorities, not snipers, who unwittingly shot at each other as a result of a communication breakdown.

Springfield and Bergen was a main crossroads in the neighborhood where the trouble began, a hub around which much of the damage revolved, and it is now a symbol of the recovery that has taken place.

It also is a living reminder that in an ever-changing city like Newark, a junction like Springfield and Bergen is more than just a place where two roads cross. It is a place for intersections of other sorts – of people, events and the forces of history.