The War Is “Still” There:

I didn’t think I, or anyone who was in Newark during the 1967 Riot (as it was called then), needed a picture book in order to recall the images captured by Life photographer Bud Lee.

I was only seven years old; but I believed my memories of that unforgettable week still were just as vivid, and probably even more so than Lee’s photos would be.

It was actually the first time I’d heard the phrase, “The Cops are killing Black people.” And those aren’t words a seven year old little Black boy is likely to forget.

To be fair, there were a lot of other words between “the” and “cops,” too, that I not only remember but have used more than a few times myself in the years since then when no other words would do. They don’t bear repeating here; but I believe most folks can figure out what they were.

I remember watching the soldiers going up and down the street, some on foot, others in jeeps, even though we were warned to stay away from the windows. All of them were white. Some looked like boys themselves and actually were.

Those soldiers were my heroes from The Rat Patrol and Combat who were there to protect us from the cops. That is until I saw who they were pointing their guns at. Ironically, it was then that I noticed all the G.I. Joes my brother and I had spent countless hours playing with were white, too. It was also the day I threw them in the trash.

But it was the sound of distant gunfire, especially at night, that I remember most. And the one night in particular when the familiar pop-pop-pop was followed by screams and the sound of my mother crying later that night. Turned out she’d heard that Mrs. Abraham, her friend who lived across the street, had been shot while standing on her front porch. Shot by the same cops whose job I had heard just days before was to kill Black people. Mrs. Abraham was the first.

That was more than half a century ago. But I still hear those words today. I still see and hear mothers crying. And now I see cops killing black people. Seems it’s still easier to pass laws that ban books than laws that ban hatred.

Today marks the beginning of the fifty-sixth anniversary of those days. And as I reflect on them, I am ever mindful that a lot of good things have happened in and to the beloved city of my youth since then. But I’m mindful, too, that on those occasions when it seems like it all happened just yesterday, it’s usually because there’s some neighborhood in some city in America where it did.

I got the book anyway. Turns out I was right. I really didn’t need to see the pictures. But America did.