On the evening of July 12, 1967, a cab driver named John Smith was pulled over and arrested by Newark police. Smith, a musician from the South who had moved north seeking better prospects, was beaten severely enough that witnesses who saw him in his holding cell at the Fourth Precinct demanded he be taken to Beth Israel Hospital. What followed over the next four days would leave 26 people dead, hundreds seriously injured, and an American city scarred in ways that decades of renewal have only begun to address. Some historians call it a riot. Others call it a rebellion. Newark itself has never fully settled the question.
The violence did not erupt from nothing. By 1967, Newark's African American population had grown to become the city's majority, yet political power remained firmly in the hands of an older establishment dominated by Italian, Irish, and Jewish Americans who had controlled city hall for generations. Mayor Hugh Addonizio -- the last white mayor Newark would have -- showed little urgency in sharing governance with the community that now formed most of his constituency. Only 145 of the city's 1,322 police officers were Black, roughly 11 percent, in a city that was more than 50 percent Black. Deindustrialization had hollowed out the economy. Redlining had confined Black residents to deteriorating neighborhoods in the Central Ward. The GI Bill had helped white veterans flee to the suburbs, but Black families found the same doors closed to them.
After Smith's arrest, word spread quickly through the Central Ward. Members of the Congress of Racial Equality and the Newark Community Union Project visited Smith's cell, saw his injuries, and pushed for his hospitalization. A rally was called at the Fourth Precinct for 7:30 that evening. By morning, the violence had claimed its first lives. Rose Abraham, a 45-year-old mother, was shot while searching for one of her children. Tedlock Bell Jr. was killed while surrendering to police. James Saunders was shot running from a liquor store. At one point, police fired into the ground floor of a building, claiming they were hunting a sniper on the upper floors -- up to five men died inside. The National Guard arrived with tanks and military equipment, and the images of armored vehicles rolling through an American city shocked the national press.
By the time order was restored on July 17, the toll was staggering: 26 dead, 1,465 arrested, and 7,917 police and National Guard members deployed across the city. The violence was compounded by chaos -- the National Guard, State Police, and local officers operated on three different radio frequencies, unable to coordinate their actions effectively. Photographer Bud Lee, embedded with Life magazine reporter Dale Wittner, captured some of the era's most searing images, including the shooting of 24-year-old William Furr outside a ransacked liquor store and the wounding of 12-year-old Joe Bass Jr. by stray shotgun pellets. Bass survived, and his bloodied image became the cover of Life magazine on July 28, 1967. Ten-year-old Eddie Moss was killed by National Guard fire at a checkpoint. His family had been driving to White Castle.
The riots accelerated forces that had already been reshaping Newark for years. White middle-class residents left in droves, and businesses followed. What remained was a city stripped of its tax base, battling poverty, crime, and disinvestment that would persist for decades. The narrative that the riots single-handedly destroyed Newark oversimplifies a more complex history -- suburbanization, deindustrialization, and discriminatory housing policy had been draining the city long before July 1967. But the violence crystallized the decline, making it visible and irreversible in ways that statistics alone could not. Newark was part of a larger national reckoning: more than 150 race-related uprisings occurred across the country during the Long Hot Summer of 1967. Philip Roth set his novel American Pastoral against the riots. The Many Saints of Newark, a 2021 Sopranos prequel film, recreated the burning streets. The city's wounds have never quite lost their rawness.
The demographic shifts that the riots accelerated have continued to reshape the city's identity. By the early 2000s, Newark's population was roughly 52 percent Black, 34 percent Latino, and 14 percent white. The police department, once overwhelmingly white, gradually diversified -- by 2016, it was 35 percent Black, 41 percent Latino, and 24 percent white, more closely reflecting the community it served. Newark's story since 1967 has been one of slow, uneven recovery: new investment arriving alongside persistent poverty, civic pride coexisting with the memory of what was lost. The Central Ward, where the violence was most intense, remains a neighborhood defined by its resilience as much as its scars.
Newark's Central Ward, the epicenter of the 1967 riots, is centered near 40.732N, 74.191W. From the air, the area lies just west of Newark Liberty International Airport (KEWR), between the Passaic River and the Garden State Parkway. The Fourth Precinct, where John Smith's arrest sparked the unrest, was on 17th Avenue. Nearby airports: Newark Liberty (KEWR) adjacent, Teterboro (KTEB) 12 nm north. Best viewed at 2,000-4,000 feet AGL.