Latino Oral History Interviews that Reference the 1967 Newark Riots

William Q. Sanchez "We knew that this was 1967, all over again. Except that—1967 was the riots in Newark and, at that time, we were living in the Columbus Homes projects and uh, on the seventh floor, and basically hiding in the bathroom because gunshots were going up our building from below. I can't tell you that it was a police shooting or the army that was shooting, but I can tell you that they were going up those buildings just shooting, and people were reacting by throwing things back at them. So this—so realizing that this might be 1967 all over again, the family decided we need to, to go home." "So there's all this frightening—what you would see on a television program or in a movie was actually happening there live, people yelling and screaming, all the—everything coming down at one time. And, again, the people inside [City Hall] were not able to control the people outside because the commotion was, was huge and then it began—once again it looked like 1967. Things began getting burned, people were getting hurt. I tried to capture as much as I could in the, in the story I did on the history of Latinos in Newark, but I can tell you that for a week after that, police would watch every young person that would walk by. And I happened to have a, a green jacket, and they followed me from my home in Columbus Homes, all the way to Rutgers [University] because I had a green jacket." "In '67, although there were Latinos involved in the riots with African Americans, it wasn't as big." "It wasn't a simple disturbance, it was a riot. People were angry, and the police, they just reacted the same way 'cause, remember, they remembered. The police also remember 1967. So the way they reacted was '67. Not, not—you see what I am saying? So it was two people remembering what happened in '67 and then doing it again." “And, and the young people who were, who were coming up, you know, they were frustrated. Their neighborhoods were, were—in ’67 were ruined, burned to the ground most of it. So they are saying, you know, you’re not going to do this again.” “And, and the young people who were, who were coming up, you know, they were frustrated. Their neighborhoods were, were—in ’67 were ruined, burned to the ground most of it. So they are saying, you know, you’re not going to do this again.” “Because after the ’67 riots, what happened in the Columbus Homes projects was the maintenance stopped. You know, you could actually see how the garbage was left and, and they weren’t being picked up. Maintenance basically disappeared, so people were—elevators weren’t being fixed. You could go into an elevator, the door would open and there’s no elevator there. Okay? You, you—if you went to the grocery store and came home—and by the way, also after ’67 even the cabs would not come to our neighborhood. They would drop you off in the Colonnades [Colonnade Apartments], which were the high-rise buildings so called at the time, which was the luxury buildings. They would drop you off there and then you walked.” “Because that’s where the, the—Springfield Avenue, in Newark, and, and Seventh Avenue, in Newark, is where the riots, in ’67, really exploded. First, down in Springfield Avenue area, and then in Newark on Seventh Avenue. But it really exploded. The visual you see in a lot of films, of [the] ’67 riots, took place in those areas. In those projects and Howard Street and, and Springfield Avenue, and, and where I was in High Street, all that area.” “Because when the ’67 riots happened, most of the stores were owned by the Italian community. And those were the stores that were burnt. Those were the stores that were destroyed when the riots happened. So the neighborhood was basically wiped out. And my mother, who used to go across the street to Foodtown [Supermarket], which was—now had to go to Kearny, which was two towns over, to shop, when she was just walking across the street. This, so as this transition began to happen, now, all of a sudden, Latinos began to own the record shops, and the bars that were left. La Regal was one of the first record stores there, and then there was the bars that the Italian community had basically—the business that they’d vacated, and were left, the Puerto Ricans took over—barber shops. So here again, yes, the riots did destroy a lot of the neighborhood, but it opened an opportunity for the Puerto Ricans to move in and become business owners. That didn’t mean they were getting insurance for their businesses. They had to—they did the business ’cause a lot of them didn’t have insurance.” Jesus Padilla LC: So you, you’re telling me that you started working the year of the riots? JP: Right. LC: So, what was it like being a police officer during, I guess, and after these riots? JP: During the riots, I think having come home from Vietnam recently helped me adapt to it because I have seen fire, bullet sounds, it didn’t bother me at all. So, I, I adapted, I thought I was back in Vietnam, that, that’s how I felt. I mean, there’s still fear that you’re gonna to get hit, but we found out that the black community, when they took to the streets, they didn’t have any weapons; they did not have any weapons. I mean, there’s a lot of bullets fired, people were killed, but I believe that most of them, deep inside, I, I didn’t see any black members of the community up there with weapons. Most of the shooting was done by National Guardsmen and State Troopers and our Newark Police. So, you know, it just goes to show you, even I believe the report that, that was done by the Commission of the ‘67 Disturbance—it wasn’t a riot, it was a disturbance—they, they agree with that, that, they didn’t, there were no weapons. We, we didn’t lock [up] anybody with a weapon, machete I saw, I locked up a guy with a machete. They came, he was coming at me, I told him, I drew my weapon and said, “Listen, you have a choice, put it down, or you’re going to get killed.” Thank god the guy put the weapon down, we locked him up. But, it’s scary, but then, again, I didn’t see, to this day I still say anywhere I go, I didn’t see any weapons in the black community and we didn’t, can’t say that we confiscated any weapons, we, some people might say that. You know, cops are known through history to plant weapons, you know, the city of New York, maybe New York is the best. They shoot you, but they, you come up with a weapon somehow, you got a weapon and that’s, I think if we confiscated any, any guns, it must have been planted. But, no, I, I didn’t see any weapons and I spent every day, we were working, we started working 16 hour shifts. LC: My God. JP: I used to live in that time, I used to live right in the middle of what they were, the riots started on South 17th Avenue and Belmont Avenue, I used to live on South 17th Street, which is like 10 blocks away from where it started, that’s why, that’s where my house was. Eli Burgos With respect to the numbers growing, by the time the riots took place, it was a chain of events. Not only were the sixties an enlightening period with the Civil Rights Movement, but as the federal government started funding agencies like the Task Force, etc. The antipoverty agencies there were outbreaks against the police for the same reasons with the Latinos. With the discrimination in places like Watts, and after Watts, you had the Newark Riots. [In] the Newark riots many, many people died, over 1300 people were arrested and another 1500 injured and the number of people killed were incredible. Some of those spread over to the African American community here in Paterson. So we had a little bit of a taste if you will, of what the bureaucrat in cities like Paterson needed to understand. The only way to get them to understand what our needs was through demonstrations, and not peaceful ones because we tried the peaceful route and it just didn't work. The community leaders who were diplomats and tried to go in turncoats because it was a pretty united community. We didn't have a lot of people who just went in and took the jobs and then just turned their backs on the community. No, we had people who said, "No, I'm not going to take this job if it means that I can't stand behind that group of people there" and try to get the police to understand that we had problems and we needed to correct those problems.