Progress--& Poison

With the highest maternal and infant mortality rates in the U.S., unemployment double the nation's average, and several square miles of scabrous ghetto housing, Negroes in Newark brought their own endemic rage to last July's six-day riot that killed 26 and left the city's Central Ward a shambles. No single grievance enraged the ghetto more than the issue of the New Jersey College of Medicine and Dentistry, which was scheduled to build a campus in the core of the slum.

The $96 million college, to be built with state and federal funds, would, of course, have brought jobs to Newark's whites and Negroes alike. But as originally planned early last year, it would also have uprooted some 20,000 Negroes from housing on the 150 acres of Central Ward land that the college wanted. "This," protested one resident, "is a diabolical plot!" After violence succeeded verbal resistance last summer, New Jersey Commissioner of Community Affairs Paul Ylvisaker began'encouraging black militants to mobilize a legal challenge against the school, which initially was planned as a research-oriented institution with little or no relationship to the slum community. Last week the challenge paid off in a unique victory for the Negro community.

"The Slaughterhouse." The medical school will indeed be built in Central Ward, but now on terms that the residents welcome. Using only 57.9 acres instead of 150, the school has guaranteed that it will take over operation of the Newark City Hospital--known locally, with only some hyperbole, as "the Slaughterhouse"--and invest $2,500,000 in repairs. In addition, a Newark community health council will supervise a comprehensive health-improvement plan for the ghetto and the training and hiring of more Negroes.

Demolition on the site will not begin until new housing is found for the residents, and subsidized, if necessary. By the agreement reached last week, at least one-third of all journeymen and one-half of all apprentice workers building the school will be recruited from minority groups, and a "substantial number of contracts" will be placed with Negro businessmen in the area.

Perhaps the most unorthodox concept of the agreement negotiated by the college and state, local and Negro representatives is a community council to be formed within a month to establish nonprofit community-housing cooperatives. The council will ensure that local Negroes have a hand, in every phase of the new housing, which will be built on 64 Central Ward acres retrieved by the city from the school's orieinal 150-acre site.

"Jungle Cruisers." The overall agreement was unprecedented, because for virtually the first time, local Negroes-even neighborhood militants--were represented directly in the six-week negotiations, telling the city's white leaders exactly what they wanted and needed. Even so, such progress may not be enough to defuse Newark. While last summer's riots were devastating the Negro neighborhoods, they were iust as disastrously poisoning some sections of the white community. In the city's blue-collar Italian wards, scores of whites are arming themselves--with scant discouragement from the police--and forming white vigilante gangs "to repel an invasion." Led by Contractor Anthony Imperiale, who deeply fears new and worse conflagrations in Newark, the vigilantes now prowl the city in "Jungle Cruisers," and are said to possess an arsenal of 1,000 rifles, an armored car and five helicopters.

Last week 50 Negroes, led by Playwright LeRoi Jones, trooped into the Newark city council chamber to confront Imperiale's vigilantes attending a routine council session. When a phonograph played the national anthem, the Negroes refused to stand and the whites cried: "Throw the bastards out!" Jones, arguing against the proposed use of police dogs in the ghetto, told the council: "Our rational plea to this community is to avoid the emotional issue of dogs. Whether you own Newark or not, nobody can sell ashes."

The Negroes walked out en masse, soon to be followed by Imperiale and his white posse. "I'm mad tonight," he said. "But our philosophy is law and order." Then, with mufflers rumbling, the Jungle Cruisers tore off on patrol. Irresponsible Negroes as well as whites have begun to arm themselves and distribute hate pamphlets ("The Wops Want War") in the ghetto. Moderates on both sides hope that the medical-school victory has not come too late.

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