The
Plainfield Rebellion-When The Chickens Came Home to Roost!*
By ‘bro.zayid’
One of the most maddening aspects of the recent retrospectives
on the Rebellions of ’67 is how ahistoric these retros were.
How is it that those epic, timemarking rebellions were in no way discussed in
terms of the history of race ‘riots’ in America? And how is that the one lone,
uniquely “successful” Rebellion, the Plainfield, New Jersey Rebellion, is
hardly ever talked about except in white, or more pointedly ‘pro-police,’
terms?
Let’s be very clear about something here: The worst riots in this country weren’t
race riots all
right. They were often massacres were Black people were killed
in extreme lynch mob fashion!
Have we forgotten the savage ‘Draft Riots’ of New York in 1863?!
On July 13, 1863, angry white men in New York City, not in Birmingham, not in
Rosewood, or
some other deep south Dixie dirty town,…in New York, legions of
angry white men, angry about being drafted to fight in the Civil War for the
Union, angry about having to risk their lives over ‘n#ggaz’ who would be made
free to compete for their jobs, angry about having to fight in a war they did
not believe in, went buckwil’ on our people and began burning down their homes
and literally stringing them up on lamp posts! It was one of the most vicious
racist orgies in the history of this racist country. At least 1000 of our
people were
killed or seriously injured in that savage racist bloodletting!
1000!
To be sure, that genocidal savagery made something painfully clear to ol’ Abe
Lincoln. He
could not win the Civil War and “preserve the Union,” his most
modest military goal, with white men
alone. For the north to win, he
came to realize that he had to arm Black men, ex-slaves themselves, who
absolutely believed in the monumental righteousness of their own cause, to make
that difference. And so
some 200,000 Black men ultimately were brought into the war to
‘seize the time,’ to send slavery and as many slavemasters as possible to hell
with their own hands!
Another race riot of this order must also be appreciated to appreciate the
significance
of a Rebellion like Plainfield’s and that is the T-Town Riot of
1921! We must never forget that that riot that destroyed ‘Black Wall Street.’
Like most lynchings and massacres, this one started with a Black man being
accused of looking at a white woman wrong. This brother was arrested and was being
prepared to be lynched. However, somehow word got out about this brother’s
ordeal.
What
happened next should be paid attention to in serious detail.
May
all the ‘bloods’ in the ‘hood smell this especially good.
Black Wall
Street not only had perhaps the most thriving and prosperous post-slavery Black
community in the country, they also had an armed underground unit in place to
defend themselves from racist terrorism. A child of the Underground Railroad
and a grandparent of the Black Liberation Army, the
African Blood Brotherhood,
a secret Black society committed to armed self-defense and the forging of a
revolutionary consciousness among our people, had a heroic
presence here. These Black men, by force of arms, came and rescued that brother
and then fought the Klan and
the police to a standstill!
But tragically,
and this is a most important detail to appreciate, at the point of negotiating
a peace, these valiant men agreed to put down their arms!
As soon as they
did, these ‘crazy baldheads,’ using Bob Marley’s language, went buckwil’!
Jealous of the vitality and the
stability on that side of the tracks, the lynch mob originally obsessed with
one black man proceeded to destroy all of ‘T-Town,’ the local nickname for what
many of us now call Black Wall Street, lock, stock and barrel and killed
at least 60 of our people in the process!
Now fast forward to ’67 in Plainfield. Plainfield was put rightfully in the
realm of Urban Folklore by none other than the man who was the voice of that
incredible insurgent summer, the man then known as H. Rap Brown, now Imam Jamil
Abdullah Al-Amin, now a wrongly held political prisoner just put into solitary confinement
as the anniversary of these rebellions are dawning, resisting incredibly with a
hunger strike.
The Imam noted in the last chapter of his movement classic, Die,
Nigger! Die, that the Plainfield Rebellion was the most “successful” of
all the rebellions of the time because it was armed, and as such, it minimized
the loss of Black life. Its lone casualty was one racist white cop. By the way,
that cop was sent to
hell by unarmed men after shooting an unarmed Black man.
To be
sure, the Plainfield Rebellion, like all of the Rebellions of that period’s
long,
hot, insurgent summer, was absolutely preventable. That
community, including its youth, bent itself over backwards to be heard on all
the abuse they were facing through all of the proper legal channels, only to be
shunned and further abused at every turn.
This
is why we say it was indeed a case of the chickens coming home to roost! All of that abuse and neglect that the
other side refused to address had suddenly blown up in their racist faces,
claimed one of their own and turned their local racist order
spinning on its hard racist head!
On July 14th, only days after Newark
exploded, a group peacefully assembled in a local park trying
to address their grievances, were put out of the park by county
police. Within hours, in the aftermath of a white police officer with a brutal
reputation shot and unarmed Black man and was then surrounded by other unarmed
Black men and unceremoniously sent to hell, Plainfield Avenue, a major
thoroughfare on the ol’ town’s west end, got rocked to the fullest!
The Rebellion was on.
It must be said here that there had been several rebellious incidents before
the 14th, that
the city mother fathers, to their detriment, chose to ignore.
But one thing could not be ignored.
As soon as the Rebellion got in
full gear, a local rifle factory, thanks to some thinking field slaves, had
been visited and relieved of at least four dozen rifles and their appropriate
ammo!
So suddenly you had Plainfield, state and federal authorities talking to Black
folk about a
“concern about bloodshed.”
Interesting.
They expressed no such concern
about bloodshed in Newark that they were still
in the process of shooting to pieces.
To be sure, this unusual concern forestalled those Police forces from
steamrolling into Plainfield and
shooting up the place the way they did in Newark where 24 of 26
of all the casualties were Black. When it came to Plainfield, because this
community was armed, all the other side could do to prevent blood from being
shed was to conduct limited searches of peoples’ homes in the ‘hood on the west
end. Of course, when they would come up with nothing in a given Black home,
they would tear that home up, further inflaming an already hot town. So to keep
our people from further going off, even that search was called off within
hours. Shortly thereafter, state and
federal forces withdrew from the town. A truce was negotiated, but at no point
were any of those weapons ever turned over or putdown!...Ever!...
It
truly made all the difference in the world!
This is
not to say that the other side was not preparing to go all out militarily to
destroy the town to put the Rebellion down if they had to. They
were. But it would have without a doubt produced casualties on both sides. The
concern for bloodshed was for their own blood being shed!
Long live the Plainfield Rebellion! There is a way to stop police brutality! A
sure fire
way! We truly do have the God-given human right to defend ourselves by any
means necessary!
*Originally written
in 2007 for the 40th anniversary of the Plainfield Rebellion...
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