Lately I get up in the morning, drink a bunch of coffee, listen to the birdies singing, look at lovely Lake Champlain and write about race riots. More specifically, I write about one race riot — the one in Newark, New Jersey in July 1967. It’s for my novel, People Who Hate America, in which the riots figure pretty prominently.

(Side note: I've got a pubslush campaign running right now to pay for editorial and production. Stop by and visit my page... my rewards rock!)

Back to Bob Curvin: It takes me approximately 35 minutes every day to get past my internal editor, the one who questions where I (if you will excuse the expression) get my balls big enough to attempt a fictional version of this hugely important event. I can usually do it, but I have to put out of my mind the many people still living who were a part of that event, who may come across my novel at some point. The hope that my book might do them some kind of justice…well at this point it’s just that. A hope.

I’m writing this week about Robert Curvin, Ph.D. Curvin is an activist and educator who has spent his life in Newark. At the time of the riots there, Curvin had founded and led Newark’s Congress on Racial Equality, working tirelessly for equal work opportunities for blacks. When a crowd gathered in front of the 4th Precinct and started throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at the police inside, Curvin was one of a handful of people allowed inside in the hopes he could help calm things down. Later that night he stood on top of a car with a bullhorn and begged the members of the crowd to go home. Unfortunately, at that point the violence was just getting started.

Curvin went on to publish widely on urban politics, economic development and social policy; chair the board of the Fund for the City of New York; serve on the boards of Humanity in Action, the Economic Mobility Corporation and the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute; serve as vice president for the Ford Foundation; and teach in the Graduate School of Management and Urban Professions at the New School for Social Research. And when the Department of Justice turned its attention to corruption in the Newark Police Department in 2011, Newark looked to Bob Curvin to help make sense of it all.  

Photo courtesy of YouthBuild USA. youthbuild.org

It’s an honor to write about somebody so awesome.