In 1967, the black community in Newark, New Jersey, was emblematic of the ghetto isolation and containment from which rebellions grew. At that time, Newark was the thirtieth largest city in the United States, with a population of four hundred thousand. As blacks migrated to Newark in the late 1950s and early 1960s, whites deserted the city; in 1960, Newark was still 65 percent white, but by 1967, it was more than 52 percent black and 10 percent Cuban and Puerto Rican. Yet whites maintained near-total political control. From Mayor Hugh Addonizio to seven of nine city council representatives and seven of nine board of education members, the city leadership was almost entirely white. Whites also dominated the city commissions. The police were almost all Italian American. Almost all of those the police arrested, though, were black. [...]

Very few black families, fewer than 13 percent, owned their own homes. Black residents had minimal access to education. Newark’s per capita expenditures on education were significantly lower than those in the surrounding areas, and 70 percent of the children in the Newark public school system were black. Almost half of Newark’s black children did not finish high school. In 1960, more than half of the city’s adult blacks had less than an eighth-grade education, and 12 percent were unemployed. Newark had the highest rates of crime, venereal disease, substandard housing, maternal mortality, and tuberculosis in the country. Organized crime was rampant. Most people convicted of crimes were black, and the majority of the victims were also black. Like the city government, organized crime—the operation, the money and power—was run by Italian Americans.