The words “Newark, New Jersey” evoke the image of a failed city, which can be traced back to the 1967 riots that consumed the place: armed National Guardsman patrolling burnt-out streets in half-tracks, widespread looting, snipers picking off firemen. Ultimately, 24 died after two days of unchecked violence. In some ways, the riots never really stopped in Newark. Over the last half-century, the city has often led the nation in murder, theft, drug abuse, gang rule, political corruption, bad schools and fatherless households. Not surprisingly, the population dropped from 400,000 in 1960 to 277,000 in 2010.
The dysphoria of Newark is not unique. Other American cities, such as Detroit and Baltimore, experienced similar declines after similar civil disturbances.
The pity of these cities is well documented. Charlie LeDuff gave an eye-witness account of urban dysfunction in “Detroit: An American Autopsy”. “The Wire”, an HBO series, humanized the gangs, the cops and the politicians of an otherwise inhumane Baltimore. Philip Roth, in “American Pastoral”, told the story of a glove manufacturer struggling (unsuccessfully) to keep his factory alive in Newark.
So, it comes as a surprise to learn that Newark was once – in living memory – a stable, thriving community where Germans, Italians, Irish, Jews and Blacks lived together side by side, house by house, block by block. Each with their own identity, but an undeniable part of the greater whole. Catholics patronized Chinese stores, Blacks played with Whites on inner city basketball courts, Jews elevated the public schools, Germans brewed local beer for everyone.
That is, until the government ploughed over these neighborhoods with highways, projects and colleges which destroyed communities and took local corruption to new heights, even by the lax standards of New Jersey. The loss of housing in black neighborhoods directly set up the riots, a rip in time that changed Newark forever.
This is the subject of Jack Cashill’s latest book, “Untenable”, a memoir about his childhood in Newark.
Cashill tells his tale through the people who lived there from 1953 to 1967, a story of stories. We meet family members and friends who all share a love for the city they remember. They also share regret at its passing.
Cashill is blessed with a colorful family that includes gamblers, drinkers and a grandfather gone missing. There are also cops, veterans, factory workers, all hanging onto the middle class by their fingernails, who nevertheless took in elderly relations at the end of their lives. And even a mysterious Norwegian sea captain who left seven children behind in Europe so that he might care for Cashill’s arthritic grandmother, by all accounts a difficult woman he never married. There is his own single mom, who raised four kids by herself and put them all through college, most achieving advanced degrees. All of these characters share a hardscrabble life reminiscent of “Angela’s Ashes”, with equal measures of poverty, comedy and courage after the Irish fashion. And like “Angela’s Ashes”, there is tragedy.
The current narrative articulated by progressives holds that these are the very people who caused the problems of Newark by leaving it – White racists who could not abide the settlement of Blacks within their city. Through interviews and a lot of hard, cold research, Cashill shows that anyone who left Newark, both White and Black, did so for the same reasons: crime and bad schools. With the breakdown in civil society, Newark had become, in a word, untenable. It is not hard to imagine similar stories in Detroit and Baltimore.
“Untenable”, then, shatters the myth of White flight. And it does so in the most powerful way imaginable – with facts, personal testimony and grace – a memoir written from the inside by someone who was there before the fall.
Kevin Brady, a first time author, has written a memoir called “North End Boy”, which is set in his native Elizabeth, New Jersey, a city just south of Newark.
