Broken deal: Devolution, development, and civil society in Newark, New Jersey, 1960–1990

Abstract

This dissertation explores the enduring conflicts over race, federalism, and local self-determination in postwar U.S. cities through the experience of Newark, New Jersey. Newark epitomized the urban crisis decades before the city erupted in one of the most deadly uprisings of the 1960s, but its story is not solely a chronicle of local decay amid federal retrenchment. Newark\u27s residents and their suburban neighbors mounted imaginative challenges to the city\u27s decline, many of which resonated nationally among policymakers and residents of similarly distressed cities. Newark\u27s black nationalists built a movement that elected African-Americans to office in unprecedented numbers. Catholic priests joined with community leaders to pioneer methods of financing low-income housing that were later incorporated into federal policy. An alliance of corporate leaders, civil rights activists, union members provoked a showdown with white trade unions over the implementation of affirmative action in organized labor. Their alliance eventually achieved one of the country\u27s most successful plans for the integration of local construction trades. Residents of the Stella Wright Homes protested the mismanagement and decline of their buildings with the longest public housing rent strike in U.S. history and launched their own experiments in self-management. Participants in these conflicts were guided by a new generation of urban leaders, whose strength lay in their ability to leverage subtle divisions among white power brokers and achieve unity of purpose among blacks and Puerto Ricans. These individuals often avoided traditional urban electoral politics, acting instead as behind-the-scenes mediators among corporate leaders, union leaders, black power advocates, government officials, and foundation executives to legitimize confrontational demands and ease the implementation of controversial policies. This dissertation shifts between the local and the national levels, illustrating the means through which Newark residents adapted or rejected state and federal policies. It analyzes the fleeting victories, frequent defeats, and constant compromises through which residents institutionalized aspects of the civil rights and black power movements. It offers a synthetic analysis of grassroots responses to the urban crisis in Newark, and illustrates how residents\u27 strategies alternately hindered and enabled the retreat of the New Deal welfare state