For Newark Millennials, History of Riots Became Way to Understand Their City

Much has changed in Newark since the 1967 riots that occurred 50 years ago this week.  For Junius Onome Williams — a Harvard University student who grew up in a Newark — the week of destruction provides a way to understand who they are as African-Americans and Newarkers. 

"A lot of the root causes of the issues we're seeing now, be it police brutality, economic deprivation, disparities in sentencing, come back to the same sorts of issues that we saw in '67," Williams said.

Junius Onome and his brother Che, a student at Hampshire College, are the sons of Junius Williams, an activist, lawyer and author who lived through the riots and stayed to help rebuild the city and raise a family there. 

Growing up, the boys certainly enjoyed seeing their father, one of Newark's most prominent civil rights leaders, on TV and in the newspaper.

Che plans to return to Newark after college, as his father and his two older sisters did.

"The people, the culture, there's so much that comes out of Newark," he said. "There's so much that happens in our area of New Jersey that a whole lot of people really don't talk about."

Click on the listen button above to hear Rebecca Carroll's interview with the Williams family. Radio producers Joseph Capriglione and Annmarie Fertoli contributed to this report.