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Russell Bingham

Russell Bingham (Baba Mshauri) holds Ras Baraka with Komozi Woodard (Saidi Komozi) in 1974. (Komozi Woodard, A Nation Within a Nation)

Born in Elizabeth, NJ in 1898, Russell Bingham was perhaps the most seasoned political actor in Newark’s struggles for Civil Rights and Black Power. In his time and travels, Bingham had been a contemporary of iconic figures in struggles for Black liberation across generations, including Marcus Garvey, Paul Robeson, and Malcolm X. Bingham had met all three of these leaders, and it was actually a meeting with Paul Robeson in Montclair that had influenced him to enlist in the Army in World War I.

According to Komozi Woodard, “the white racism he encountered in the war laid the early basis for his black political consciousness.” While serving in World War I, Bingham told Woodard, “We had more problems in France with the crackers than we had with Germans, actually… some of them, like the Alabama group and the Fifth Marines, they were more enemies to us than the Germans were.” After these marines fired into Bingham’s barracks one night, his infantry organized to return fire the following night to chase the marines out of the camp.

After returning home from the war, Bingham worked with the NAACP to desegregate movie theaters in Newark and his hometown of Elizabeth in the 1920s. During FDR’s campaigns in the 1930s, Bingham supported the platform of the New Deal and canvassed in Elizabeth to encourage Black voters to switch to the Democratic Party. In the 1950s, Bingham became acquainted with Eulis “Honey” Ward, and worked together with Clarence “Larry” Coggins and other Black political operatives to elect Irvine Turner as the city’s first Black city councilman in 1954. Ward, Bingham, and Turner represented a generation of political leaders in Newark that were not afraid to play hard ball with the bosses of ethnic political machines or their interests in the underworld. “Russell was everything that a lot of black guys wanted to be,” “Honey” Ward later said. “He was dap, articulate, knew how to make money, had a lot of guts.”

In 1966, Bingham broke with Newark’s Democratic Party over the party’s support of plans to build the NJ College of Medicine and Dentistry in the Central Ward. Bingham’s break with the Democratic Party started a shift in his political involvement. At the National Conference on Black Power, held in Newark just days after the 1967 rebellion, Bingham met Ron Karenga, the cultural nationalist leader of US Organization in California and advisor to Amiri Baraka. After the conference, at 69 years of age, Bingham became Baraka’s senior political advisor and a founder of the United Brothers and Committee For Unified Newark (CFUN). “Signifying the change in his values and his identity,” Woodard explained, “Russell Bingham pledged himself to live by Karenga’s seven principles and was reborn Baba Mshauri, literally the ‘elder counselor.”

As a member of the United Brothers and CFUN, Baba Mshauri built on his years of political experience and played an active role in establishing a Black united front to gain Black political power in the 1970 elections for mayor and city council. As Baraka’s political advisor, he helped to organize the 1969 Black and Puerto Rican Convention, which nominated and organized to elect Newark’s first Black mayor, Ken Gibson.

“In his eulogy at Baba’s funeral,” Woodard wrote, “Baraka would refer to him affectionately as his consigliere, his most trusted advisor, and a second father who counseled him about controlling his unmanageable rage against racism and forced him to think strategically and politically.”

References:

Komozi Woodard, A Nation Within a Nation

Komozi Woodard Interview with Eulis “Honey” Ward, February 7, 1986.

 

Who’s Coming In, Who’s Going Out?

World War II kicked off the second Great Migration, as African Americans from the South sought better living conditions in Newark and other cities. Between 1940 and 1950, the African American population of Newark increased from 45,760 to 74,965—growing from 10.7% to 17.2% of the city’s total population. In many ways, this population influx marked a tipping point for recognition.

For most of Newark, the depression ended. “Help wanted “ signs went up. But African Americans could not always find a job. The New Jersey Afro-American wrote in 1941 that while contracts for nearly a billion and a half dollars in government defense orders have been placed with firms in New Jersey, the Urban League finds that these firms have steadfastly refused to hire colored workers.”

 

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“Help wanted “ signs went up. But African Americans could not always find a job.
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But some African Americans did find employment. Jobs for blacks in the Newark defense workforce improved from 4% in 1942, to 8.8% in 1943. With the overall economy booming, Newark’s downtown stores began hiring some African Americans as elevator operators and janitors. Large restaurants hired blacks as chefs, cooks and waiters—they could work, but not sit down to eat. The war years helped enhance the prospects of some, while still denying prosperity for the many.

Whites Begin to Leave

Around 1947, the white middle class started deserting Newark for the suburbs, along with the businesses that sustained them. The post World-War II boom was good for businesses for a while, but factories, schools, and streets had been neglected during the war. Overcrowding was a problem, especially in the ghettos. These conditions made the suburbs very attractive as alternatives to Newark.

The G.I. Bill of Rights and FHA loans made it easier for whites to buy a house, and brand new highways built by the federal government with taxpayers’ dollars made it easier to drive those new automobiles to the suburbs, in Essex County and further west. These same mortgages were unavailable to most African Americans; and most suburbs were off limits.

 

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These same mortgages were unavailable to most African Americans; and most suburbs were off limits.
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But Newark’s heterogeneous ethnic character remained intact in the early and mid-1950s. Newark was described as follows by writer Joseph Conforti:

The Germans had given way to the Irish who in 1950 shared political power with an Italian and a Jew. The ethnic division of the city could also be observed less directly. Many occupations were ethnically identifiable: the police and fire departments were overwhelmingly Irish; the construction trades were Italian; the merchants were largely Jewish, the small luncheonettes were Greek, the large businesses were owned and operated by WASPs, skilled craftsmen were likely to be German, and the factory operatives were Irish, Polish and Italian. Even the city’s taxicabs had ethnic identifications…yellow cabs were operated by the Irish, 20th Century cabs by Jews, Brown and White cabs by Italians, and Green cabs by blacks.

Newark’s Changing Demographics

Ghettoization continued in Newark. By 1940, the Third Ward (today’s Central Ward) alone contained more than 16,000 black residents. By 1944 nearly one third of the apartments and housing in the black areas were below the standards of minimum decency. Some houses still had outside bathrooms.

The slums were among the worst in the nation. The situation was particularly grim for African Americans, clustered on “the hill” just west of the Essex County Court House. Public Housing did not help a lot. There were 7 low-income projects finished before the war, but by 1946, there were 2,110 white families and only 623 black families in the buildings. Four of the projects housed no black people. The best low-rise public housing, such as Bradley Court, was reserved for whites; while the poorest units, such as F.D.R. Homes, were reserved for blacks. Ultimately, the majority of African Americans were steered into the growing number of high rise public housing which just happened to be built in the center city where black people had been confined beginning at the turn of the 20th century.

 

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Four of the projects housed no black people.
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The 1950 Census showed the trend in population increases for blacks, and decrease by whites. Newark’s total population rose only slightly from 429,760 in 1940 to 438,776 in 1950. Black residents had increased from 45,760 to 74,965—more than a 60% increase. When newspapers took a look at the faces of misery, increasingly they were black.

Even though the city began hemorrhaging jobs (250 manufacturers left between 1950-60; 1,300 manufactures left during the 1960s), the more dramatic change in the city’s socioeconomic structure was the rapidly changing composition of the city’s population.

African Americans were rapidly become politically and economically obsolete in a city where they would soon be in the majority. Segregation and discrimination by race and class defined Newark’s offering to the city’s newest immigrants.

Listen to the people speak about their experiences as newcomers to Newark below…

Article on 1968 United Brothers Convention

Article on 1968 United Brothers Convention

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Article from June 13, 1968 covering the United Brothers political convention to nominate candidates for City Council. Bingham is pictured at right with Ken Gibson. — Credit: The Star-Ledger

Transcript of Oral History Interview, Pt. 1

Transcript of Oral History Interview, Pt. 1

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Transcript of oral history interview of Russell Bingham, conducted by Komozi Woodard on November 27, 1984. — Credit: Komozi Woodard

Transcript of Oral History Interview, Pt. 2

Transcript of Oral History Interview, Pt. 2

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Transcript of oral history interview of Russell Bingham, conducted by Komozi Woodard on December 4, 1984. — Credit: Komozi Woodard

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