By People’s Organization for Progress (POP)
The People’s Organization For Progress (POP) will have a 1967 Newark Rebellion Commemoration March And Rally on the 58th anniversary of the uprising, Saturday, July 12, 2025, 12:00 noon starting at the Rebellion Monument, located at 250 Springfield Avenue in Newark, NJ.
The monument is in an area unofficially known as Rebellion Park which is located on Springfield Ave between Hayes Street and Irvine Turner Blvd. It is dedicated to those killed during the unrest.
Participants in the event will march from the monument to the 1st Police Precinct at 10 17th Avenue. The precinct is where the 1967 Newark Rebellion started.
“Since the founding of the People’s Organization (POP) 43 years ago we have commemorated the 1967 Newark Rebellion not simply because it was a memorable event but more importantly for its continued relevance to our contemporary condition and circumstances,” Lawrence Hamm, Chairman, People’s Organization For Progress stated.
“Long before POP was established people were referring to the upheaval in 1967 as a ‘rebellion’ and not a ‘riot,’ Hamm said.
“We did so because the rebellion was black people’s collective response to years of on-going white racist oppression and not simply a spontaneous mob riot in response to a single random incident,” he said.
The uprising was sparked by an incident of police brutality which had been a long standing problem in Newark’s black community. Again and again black people experienced and witnessed incidents of people being killed, brutalized, harassed and unjustly arrested by the police.
“People complained and nothing substantive was done to remedy the problem. And then on July 12th two white Newark police officers beat an African-American cab driver named John Smith. That was it. People had enough,” he said.
The rebellion took place over a four day period. 7,917 police and national guard were mobilized to put it down. A state of emergency was declared and martial law was established.
“I was living in Newark during the rebellion. I saw the guard come into our community. I saw them marching with rifles and pistols in formation, riding in trucks, jeeps, and tanks. We were under military occupation,” he said.
When it was over 26 people had been killed, more than 700 injured and nearly 1,500 arrested. It resulted in millions of dollars of property damage.
“The upheaval was catastrophic but it also gave added impetus to a dynamic movement for black political power that led to the election of Kenneth A. Gibson as Newark’s first African American mayor and eventually a predominantly Black city council during his second term,” he said.
It is important to understand that rebellions didn’t just happen in Newark. They happened in other cities and towns across the state and nation. Between 1960 and 1971 There were more than 1,000 uprisings in the United States.
Hamm said that some progress has been made over the past 58 years, but black people still face many of the problems that drove them to rise up in 1967.
“Police brutality, racism, inequality, poverty, segregation, discrimination, gentrification, lack of affordable housing, low wages, unemployment, substandard education, and inadequate healthcare are just some of the problems that we are still plagued with,” Hamm said.
“It must be noted that Newark’s poverty rate in 1967 was 18 percent. However, today it is 27 percent. The unemployment rate in 1967 was 7.3 percent. Today the unemployment rate is almost the same at 7 percent,” he said.
And more difficult times appear to be in the making after the passage last week of President Trump’s budget bill. The bill, which is now law, provides for trillion dollar tax cuts for the rich and slashes funds for social services including record cuts in food stamps and Medicaid. This will certainly have an adverse impact on the city’s working and poor families.
“The question that faces the city almost six decades later is whether the conditions that led to the rebellion of 1967 still exist and whether the city will be able to avoid another upheaval sometime in the future,” he said.
Could police brutality spark another rebellion in Newark? After a Justice Department investigation the Newark Police Department was placed under a consent degree and an independent federal monitor. Since then there has been a decline in the overall number of police shooting deaths.
Nonetheless there have still been some fatalities. One of those is Carl Dorsey who was killed by a Newark police detective Rod Simpkins on January 1, 2021. Simpkins was not charged for killing Dorsey and this triggered protests against police brutality in the city.
For decades, the People’s Organization For Progress has called for the establishment of police review boards with subpoena powers to deal with the problem of police brutality in Newark and in cities and towns throughout the state.
People in Newark have been demanding a police review board for at least 65 years, even before the 1967 rebellion. The demand took on increased importance in the aftermath of the uprising.
However, the establishment of police review boards with subpoena powers requires the passage of state legislation to allow municipalities to set them up. A bill introduced five years ago that would make this possible has been met with stiff opposition and has not been brought before the legislature for a vote.
This has outraged many activists since Democrats control state government. There is a Democratic governor and Democratic majorities in both houses of the legislature. And African Americans are among the party’s most loyal voters and among those most affected by police brutality.
Hamm said that the commemoration will not just be an act of remembrance but also a call for action.
“We are going to call for the passage of federal and state legislation dealing with police brutality, protection and expansion of voting rights and civil rights, increasing the minimum wage, affordable housing, slavery reparations for African Americans, and efforts to mitigate the negative impact of Trump’s recently passed budget bill,” he said.
“We are also going to call for increased citizen engagement and participation including voter registration, education and mobilization, economic boycotts, protests, and movement building for both reform and systemic change,”he said.
For directions and other information call the People’s Organization For Progress at (973)801-0001.
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