SBN Newsmakers: Documentary Filmmaker Kevin McLaughlin Discusses “Riot,” his new film about the 1967 Newark Uprising

NEWARK, NJ (SBN) — In July 1967, following the arrest of a Black cab driver by police, the city of Newark erupted into several days of violent urban unrest.

Still, today it’s hard to believe that an event that few people remember or know anything about could have had such a huge impact on millions of people.

Documentary filmmaker Kevin McLaughlin, this week’s SBN Newsmakers guest, is out with a new film about Newark. It’s called Riot. The film, being distributed on PBS TV stations in 2025, traces the history of Newark up to the present day through the lens of the civil disturbances that rocked the city in 1967. It includes interviews with Newark residents, witnesses to the violence, and from individuals engulfed in the traumatic events of that week.

Watch the trailer for the movie in the player below.

While the rioting killed 26 people, and certainly had a major effect on the families of those people, countless others were affected in many ways.

Hundreds of family businesses were destroyed.

Many thousands of people were displaced, and the white flight that was already underway was accelerated exponentially.

That movement of people reverberated throughout the state, spurring development much farther out into the suburbs than it might have ever gone otherwise. 

The story can be considered a crystal ball for communities like Ferguson and Baltimore, where current-day conflicts threaten to thrust those cities into a similar downward spiral.

In this episode of SBN Newsmakers, Kevin McLaughlin discusses his film and shares excerpts from the movie.

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