00:00When protests against law enforcement are boiling over in cities across the U.S., there's
00:04no better time to take a hard look at how one of these conflicts begins and how it can
00:08impact a city for decades afterwards.
00:10The people of Newark, New Jersey don't have to guess.
00:13For more than 50 years, they've lived with a specter of five days of conflict that left
00:1926 people dead and destroyed a large portion of their city.
00:22There were people here who had been stripped of their rights, who faced implacable walls
00:29of bigotry.
00:30I think when you back anyone up against a wall and they feel helpless, they will strike
00:35back.
00:36They will fight back.
00:37They will riot.
00:38I remember as if it were yesterday, it was the 13th of July, and some guy drove a car right
00:43into Flax's furniture store, and the looting began.
00:48When I became a farmer, I knew that it was difficult, physical, dangerous work at times.
00:53I never suspected that I would ever be shot at.
00:57My mother was so afraid because she got eight kids, she had us under the bed hiding.
01:01I remember bullets and stuff coming through.
01:03I went out on the streets, I had a loaded gun with my hand almost on the trigger.
01:09Was I scared?
01:10Yeah.
01:11It was stealing, burning, burning other people's properties, destruction of property.
01:17Fire engines going everywhere, police cars going everywhere.
01:21The National Guard, they were very serious, man.
01:25They were like, don't move, and people was moving, and they were shooting.
01:29They would return fire on this high rise, and I mean hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
01:35These are steel ball, armor-piercing rounds.
01:37They will go through a brick wall.
01:39The whole city on fire, it looked like London in 1940, during the course of the London Blitz.
01:55The city has its worst nightmare.
02:00Some people said, okay, let's pick up where we left off.
02:07This film features the people who were actually there, and those who stayed behind to clean
02:12up the mess.
02:13See how one city spent over a half century struggling to make peace with the darkest chapter
02:19in its history.
02:20Should the boiling pot never boil over again?
02:24If it does, shame on us.
Comments