Shortly after nine o’clock at night on July 12, 1967, a police patrol stopped a taxi on a street in Newark, New Jersey. What seemed like a routine procedure ended up becoming one of the most significant episodes in contemporary American history. The driver, an African American man named John William Smith, was beaten during his arrest and taken to a police station. Within hours, a rumor began to spread that no one could stop: the taxi driver had died at the hands of the police.
The news, false but plausible to a community accustomed to reporting police abuse, fell upon a city that had been accumulating frustrations for years. Thousands of people took to the streets demanding explanations. The protests quickly turned into looting, fires, armed clashes and a police and military response that multiplied the tragedy. Five days later, Newark was a devastated city: 26 dead, hundreds injured, more than 1,500 arrested and entire neighborhoods reduced to rubble.
Although the violence began with an arrest, its roots were much deeper. John William Smith was 51 years old and had worked as a taxi driver his entire life. He was known among his passengers as a quiet, hardworking man who traveled the streets of Newark daily to support his family. Like many African Americans of the time, he had experienced firsthand segregation, employment discrimination, and constant tensions with law enforcement.
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That night he was driving through the Central Ward neighborhood when he was pulled over by two police officers. According to the official version, he had improperly passed a parked patrol car. Smith denied committing such an infraction and began an argument with the officers.
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The African American community of Newark had been lodging complaints about police abuse, employment discrimination, and segregation since before the arrest of John William Smith
What happened next remains a subject of debate. Witnesses claimed that the police officers beat him violently with batons and gun butts before putting him into the police vehicle. The officers maintained that the driver had resisted arrest and that it was necessary to subdue him by force.
Smith was taken to the 4th Precinct—a police station located on 16th Avenue in the city. There, he continued to receive medical attention due to the injuries sustained during his arrest. While he remained in custody, neighbors began to gather in front of the police station. Tension rose when a woman claimed to have seen the driver’s bloodied body. Within minutes, the comment transformed into a much more dramatic version: “The police killed the taxi driver.” Then, the outrage exploded.
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The first protesters simply demanded that Smith appear alive. They wanted to see him walk out of the police station, an explanation, and proof that the rumor was false. However, the relationship between the African American community and the Newark police had been deteriorating for too long to trust official versions.
Throughout the 1960s, reports of arbitrary arrests, beatings, and discrimination were constant. The city was changing profoundly. Thousands of Black families had arrived from the south of the country seeking better job opportunities during the so-called Great Migration—a massive exodus of African Americans from the rural American South to this industrial city in New Jersey between 1910 and 1970. However, they found deteriorating neighborhoods, rising unemployment, and scarce political representation.
Although the majority of the inhabitants were already African American, power remained concentrated in white leaders and a police force composed almost exclusively of white officers as well, many of whom did not even live in Newark. The feeling of abandonment was widespread.
As night fell, windows began to shatter. Some businesses were looted. Police officers tried to disperse the crowd using physical force. The result was exactly the opposite. Each intervention by the force attracted more people. By the early hours of July 13, there were already numerous fires in different parts of the city.
Thus, the images began to travel throughout the United States. During the second day, the violence spread rapidly. Groups of young people erected barricades using overturned cars and debris. Some businesses were set on fire while others were looted before being set ablaze.
The firefighters had enormous difficulties working because they were being shot at from different buildings or were attacked with stones when they tried to put out the flames. The police decided to respond with increasing force. Numerous subsequent testimonies denounced indiscriminate shooting at residential buildings from where it was assumed that snipers could be coming. Later investigations would determine that in many cases those shooters never existed and that the fear of alleged attacks led to opening fire on windows occupied by civilians.
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The arrival of the National Guard and the State Police marked a new turning point. More than 4,000 armed personnel entered Newark equipped with rifles, armored vehicles, and machine guns. The streets began to look like a war zone and clashes were constant. Curfews were decreed and public gatherings were prohibited, but the measures barely managed to partially contain the violence.
The 1967 Newark riots left 26 dead, hundreds injured, nearly 1,500 arrested, and entire neighborhoods destroyed in five days of violence
In many neighborhoods, the smoke made it impossible to see more than a few meters away. Sirens wailed throughout the night. Fear took hold of the population. Many families remained hidden in basements while bullets tore through windows and walls. The number of victims began to multiply.
Of the 26 people who died, the vast majority were African American civilians. Many died from gunfire by police, soldiers, or national guardsmen. Others, amidst fires or during armed clashes. More than 700 citizens were injured. Nearly 1,500 ended up arrested. The material damage reached millionaire figures for the time. Hundreds of businesses were completely destroyed and the local economy would take years to recover.
Meanwhile, John Smith was still alive. When he was finally able to speak with journalists, he confirmed that he had been beaten during the arrest. His injuries reinforced the outrage of those who maintained that the trigger for the tragedy was another case of police brutality. However, it was already too late to stop a spiral of violence that had taken on a life of its own because each death generated new protests. Each gunshot provoked new riots. The fires fueled the feeling that Newark was collapsing.
New Jersey Governor Richard J. Hughes maintained constant communication with local and federal authorities while attempting to prevent an even greater bloodbath. The orders issued to the National Guard tightened control of the streets through permanent patrols, the occupation of major intersections, and the protection of public buildings and strategic infrastructure.
At the same time, discreet negotiations began with community leaders, pastors, priests, and African American neighborhood representatives. They did play a decisive role. From churches and community centers, they asked neighbors to abandon the clashes and avoid further deaths. Many personally went through the most troubled neighborhoods, speaking with young people who distrusted both the police and political authorities. That silent work gradually helped to reduce the tension.
The Kerner Commission concluded that the Newark riots were the result of decades of inequality, poverty, residential segregation, and police abuse in the United States
The combination of the massive military presence, the physical exhaustion of the protesters, the curfew, and the mediation of local leaders meant that by July 17, the riots finally began to die down. There was no formal agreement or a precise moment that marked the end. The city simply could no longer withstand any more violence.
When the troops began to withdraw, Newark offered a desolate image with streets covered in broken glass, charred buildings, incinerated vehicles, and family businesses turned into piles of rubble. And a deep distrust between the community and the security forces.
The funeral ceremonies for many of the victims became new manifestations of collective grief. Thousands of people accompanied the processions, demanding justice and insisting that the deaths not go unpunished. Subsequent investigations harshly questioned the police and military actions. Various reports concluded that many victims had been shot without posing a threat and that the use of force had been disproportionate.
The expansion of looting, arson, and barricades in Newark was exacerbated by the police response, which included reports of indiscriminate shooting at buildings with civilians
That same year, the Kerner Commission—created by President Lyndon B. Johnson to investigate the racial unrest that occurred in various American cities and chaired by Otto Kerner, governor of the state of Illinois—reached a blunt conclusion: the uprisings were not simple explosions of crime, but the consequence of decades of inequality, residential segregation, employment discrimination, poverty, and police abuse. The report warned that the United States was moving toward “two societies, one black and one white, separate and unequal.”
Newark’s wounds took decades to begin to heal. The city lost population, industries, and investments. Many businesses never reopened their doors. Numerous neighborhoods were left scarred by urban abandonment. John William Smith continued to live far from the spotlight that history had involuntarily imposed upon him. He never imagined that that traffic dispute would end up triggering one of the greatest urban riots of the 20th-century United States.
More than half a century later, Newark continues to remember those five days as a warning about the cost of ignoring injustices for too long. The beating of a taxi driver was merely the spark. The real fuel had been accumulating for decades beneath the streets of a city that was no longer willing to bear the weight of inequality. When it finally erupted, it left a lesson that still resonates in the United States: when trust between a community and those meant to protect it disappears, a single episode is enough to turn discontent into a historical tragedy.
