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.
Steve Lubetkin is the news director for StateBroadcastNews.com. Steve’s journalism background includes print and broadcast reporting for NJ news organizations. He refocused on multimedia journalism and podcast production after a long career in corporate branded journalism and public relations.
He has won numerous awards for his audio and video news reporting from the Garden State Journalists Association, and he has also been recognized for video by the New Jersey Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. He has produced a wide range of audio and video podcasts in his other role as managing partner of State Broadcast News’s parent, The Lubetkin Media Companies.
Steve also has reported on-camera and produces virtual conferences for NJSpotlightNews.org, a public policy news coverage website focused on New Jersey government and industry; and for clients of StateBroadcastNews.com, a division of The Lubetkin Media Companies LLC.
From May-November 2019, he produced and reported a weekly podcast, The CRE News Hour, a news and features program focusing on the commercial real estate industry.
From 2014 to 2019 he was New Jersey and Philadelphia editor for GlobeSt.com and filled in covering Chicago/Midwest and Atlanta.
Steve has also served (from August 2017 to March 2018) as national broadcast news correspondent for CEOReport.com, a news website focused on practical advice for senior executives in small- and medium-sized companies.
Earlier in his career, Steve reported on rock music at the Jersey Shore for the Asbury Park Press, and was a broadcast news anchor and production engineer for WJLK-AM & FM, then owned by the Press. He also worked as a general assignment reporter for the Red Bank Register, Shrewsbury, NJ.
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