The Shooting of Lester Long

In the early 1970s, the political influence that Amiri Baraka and the Newark Congress of African People (CAP) had in the city and the nation was swelling. Having established several successful community programs and organizations, as well as having helped to elect the first black mayor of Newark, Baraka turned his gaze to larger scale community developments, with the goal of transforming the Central Ward ghetto into a “New Ark.” The first target for Baraka’s urban development plan was a tract of urban renewal land in the Central Ward known as NJR-32, where CAP intended to develop community housing, cooperative businesses, and a host of neighborhood institutions. To Baraka and CAP, this plan was “a black nationalist alternative to the white supremacist policy of urban renewal.” However, while the project was delayed by the Newark Housing Authority, CAP and its allies found a different plot of land to develop housing on in the meantime.

In 1972, Amiri Baraka unveiled plans to build housing for low- and moderate-income people at the corner of Lincoln Avenue and Delevan Street in the North Ward. On the land in this predominantly Italian American neighborhood, Baraka and CAP planned to develop a $6.5 million, 16-floor building, which was to contain over 200 apartment units, along with a theatre, day care center, and other community resources for residents. The name of the project, Kawaida Towers, was derived from the cultural nationalist doctrine of Kawaida, meaning “tradition and reason,” and reflected Baraka’s goal of promoting the development of communal living. With Kawaida Towers set to be a test run for NJR-32, Baraka assembled an impressive interracial team of architects, lawyers, and contractors and broke ground on the project in July 1972.

However quickly the plans came together, it became clear that Kawaida Towers would not be built without a fight from white residents of the North Ward. Though the project had been granted tax abatement by order of North Ward City Councilman Frank Megaro, and gained the support of Councilman-at-Large Ralph Villani and State Senator Anthony Imperiale, pickets and protests at the construction site began just days after the ceremonial groundbreaking in October 1972.

The cause of the sudden emergence of white backlash was North Ward Democratic Party Chairman Steve Adubato, who had used the ceremonial groundbreaking as a platform to publicly oppose the project. With Adubato, a major political power broker in the city, publicly challenging the project, the battle lines were drawn in the North Ward. Anthony Imperiale seized the opportunity to lead a public assault against Kawaida Towers by mobilizing members of his North Ward Citizens Committee, along with the Newark Police Department, to hold daily protests at the construction site. Initially led by off-duty police officers, the protests quickly swelled as hundreds of white protestors joined in the fray, threatening that “blood would run in the streets.”

While the crowds of white protestors, often aided by police, blocked construction workers from getting to the site, Imperiale and John Cervase filed a lawsuit against the development. In court, the two “fabricated technical objections” to the height of the building and the legality of the tax abatement, to “disguise their racial objection,” Komozi Woodard wrote. Though soundly defeated in court by the legal defense of Kawaida Towers, the opposition was taken up by the City Council, who voted to rescind the tax abatement in November 1972. Empowered by the City Council vote, the mobs at the construction site turned violent, as they blocked construction workers from entering the site, shouting racial slurs and attacking black laborers as they tried to get to work.

Though supported by an array of religious, labor, and political organizations, Baraka and CAP struggled to compete with the numbers and force that Imperiale and Adubato had mobilized in opposition in the North Ward. Furthermore, Mayor Ken Gibson, whom Baraka had helped to elect, chose mainly to stay on the sidelines of the turmoil, and had little to no control over the police department that was playing a central role in the conflict. Police Director John Redden resigned during the conflict, blaming Baraka for fomenting the racially-charged opposition to the housing project. Violence spread from the construction site, as white mobs attacked black people in the North Ward, black students were attacked in school, and shotgun blasts were fired into CAP headquarters at 502 High Street.

The violent opposition to Kawaida Towers proved insurmountable for Baraka and CAP, as the Mayor and City Council sided with the North Ward opposition to the project. Illustrating the dismay of supporters of Kawaida Towers, CAP member Saidi Nguvu said, “we had followed the law and everything was right; but they refused to build it and they physically attacked us.” By 1974, Kawaida Towers had been defeated, and in the following year, so too were the plans for NJR-32. With these crushing defeats, Komozi Woodard declared, “the Black Power experiment in Newark was over.”

In the following months, the funding for Kawaida Towers, NJR-32, and the African Free School was withdrawn, and the programs were dissolved. The Newark Housing Authority demolished the buildings that housed CAP’s theatre and television studio training program, the headquarters of the National Black Assembly, the African Liberation Support Committee, and the classrooms of the African Free School. In 1976, the $1.5 million foundation of Kawaida Towers was buried by the New Jersey Housing Finance Agency.

“The housing development would have institutionized Baraka at another level in the pantheon of political power,” Junius Williams later reflected.” “Along with the other social and educational programs he had designed and implemented, he would have become a formidable force in Newark at yet another level of power—he would have transferred from People Power to power based on position and money.”

References:

Robert Curvin, Inside Newark: Decline, Rebellion, and the Search for Transformation

Junius Williams, Unfinished Agenda: Urban Politics in the Era of Black Power

Komozi Woodard, A Nation Within A Nation: Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Black Power Politics