ELIZABETH FORUM – MARCH 22, 2005

Sponsored by: Historical Society; Elizabeth NJ Inc at Halsey House, Elizabeth High School

“CRISIS IN AFRICA – WHOSE PROBLEM IS IT?” by US Congressman Donald M. Payne

Congressman Payne began by noting his recent trip to Chad in Africa where refugees from the genocide in Sudan have gone to escape government-sponsored rape, pillage and murder. His concern was more than offering an overview of this international dilemma; it was to make the point to his American constituency that this seemingly distant problem has consequences for Elizabeth NJ itself. First, the separation of international and local issues arises from misconceptions of America’s relations with overseas especially African nations.

Whatever happens in Africa, soon happens everywhere. It behooves America to be a good neighbor and to work to forestall issues that have practical remedies. Congressman Payne sought a new perspective on Africa itself as a groundwork. Africa, he reminded his audience, is an area of eleven million square miles, larger than the US, China and Europe combined. It contains over one thousand languages with their distinctive cultures. It is, to put it simply, a vast continent and the most diverse in the world. It is also the birthplace of human beings and all now living, DNA research has documented, connect to Africans 150,000 years ago.

Part of the explanation for Americans misperception of Africa stems from a history of European nations – first Portugal, then Britain (who exported more than 2.5 million persons as slaves), then Belgium and Spain et al – exploited the African people with their colonial structures. The natural resources of the country – diamonds, timer, oil, agricultural goods etc – did not benefit its indigenous people and were exported. This colonial exploitation received the legitimation of 14 European countries who met and apportion the African continent at the Berlin Conference of 1885.

Only recently have African countries begun to achieve independence. First with Ghana in 1957, probably a function of agitation derived from the American civil rights movements and its leaders, down to 1994 with the election of Nelson Mandela in South Africa. Democracy is young and often still operates under many practices begun by colonial powers and their corporations. Some forms of corruption and graft become reasons for US to withhold support from these countries. Some Americans object to aiding foreign powers when much needs to be done at home. Many Americans, however, don’t realize that a scant one-tenth of one percent of the US budget goes to all foreign powers – Egypt, Israel, Columbia etc including Africa. Much more should be done given our past and present interactions with this continent.

Actually America during the Cold War supported many African dictators like Charles Taylor in Liberia and Mobuto in Zaire, who had devastating impacts on their own people. America ignored these internal damages, preferring to cite these countries as allies against the Soviet influence. In addition, democratically elected officials, like Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, who cultivated the Soviet influence, not only received no support from the US but actually became a target of CIA covert assassination squads. American complicity in the Angolan civil war in which 300,000 Africans were killed has left the country riddled with landmines and has contributed to Angola having the highest rate of amputees on any country in the world.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has begun one constructive African initiative by prodding the G-8 industrial countries to forgive $12B in debt to African countries, largely incurred by undemocratic dictators before independence. The pattern should follow the US forgiveness of Iraq debt, incurred under Saddam Hussein. In addition, US pension funds need to withdraw their investment in countries that flaunt undemocratic practices, like we once argued about South Africa and which now needs to be directed toward Sudan. NJ public pension funds – police, firemen, construction trades and teachers – could have a marked impact and should not want any association with nations practicing genocide.

Two other items that would markedly aid African nations – a largely agricultural continent – would be to endorse fair trade practices. The US, the European Union and Japan need to curb their farm subsidies that make it cheaper for some African farmers to buy a Perdue chicken in his own country than to invest in feed, fertilizer etc to grow his own poultry. Subsidies keep prices artificially low and raise the cost of agricultural products elsewhere, eliminating a major economic opportunity for “independent” African nations. Secondly, in areas of health HIV, TB and malaria – the biggest killer of Africans today – medicines need to be cultivated and made available to individuals where current daily wages would be insufficient to sustain official pharmaceutical costs of appropriate pills and treatment.

President George W Bush’s recent pledge of $15B to Africa over 5 years is a great improvement over past meager outlays. But the problem is large in Africa where 25+ million people live with AIDs at the end of 2004 (1.9 of them children under the age of 15). Congressman Payne urged the audience to consider that the Elizabeth High School, the largest in New Jersey, cost $36 million dollars to build. The daily cost of military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan is equivalent to the costs of building 30 such schools every day. War is necessary sometimes but we need to keep our perspectives on it economic as well as its moral impact on our country and not enter into it lightly.

Sudan is roughly the size of France and Darfur, sheltering individuals who are Christian and animist, has engaged in a 40 year war with Kartoum in the North (Arab and Muslim). Two million people at least have died in this struggle and an additional 4 million have been displaced. Recently the government in the North has expanded its hostility against Muslims themselves who are African rather than Arab. A practice of bombing defenseless villages, then sending troops to rape and pillage, killing the livestock which represent the central value of most communities, and finally exhorting nomadic militias called Janjaweed, to execute any stragglers, has resulted in genocide. The Congressman’s bill the Darfur Genocidal Accountability Act (HR 1424) – seeks to establish a no-fly zone for Sudan planes like the US created in Iraq, troops to protect innocent villagers, and attention to infrastructure problems like permanent buildings (not tents) in refugee camps as well as forecasts for water needs in the face of diminishing natural supplies.

ELIZABETH FORUM – MAY 5, 2005
Historical Society; Elizabeth NJ Inc – held at the Historic Elizabeth Train Station

“VISIONS OF AMERICA; VISIONS OF JUDAISM: JEWISH IMMIGRANT COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT, ELIZABETH NJ 1900-1950″

AN INTERACTIVE DISCUSSION WITH PHILIP WOLGIN

On November 21st, 1944, the members of Elizabeth’s Young Men’s-Young Women’s Association (Y.M.-Y.W.H.A.) and the Elizabeth Jewish Council met with the members of the Jewish Educational Center (J.E.C.) at the J.E.C.’s new headquarters at 330 Elmora Avenue. The discussion at hand revolved around the future of the Jewish Educational Center and its place in Elizabeth. The J.E.C. marked a radical departure for the community – a synagogue and community center based on a traditional-orthodox approach to Judaism.

The split itself, and the language used to characterize it, raises a number of historical issues. If the Jewish population of Elizabeth in 1944 divided itself between two distinct structures and philosophies, how could these groups speak of ‘the community’ in the first place? If one community had existed, what changes brought about the division of the population, and what ultimately caused its bifurcation? How did Elizabeth’s ‘community’ develop in the first place, what role did religious ideology play, and how did that role change? The inherent dilemma sheds light on the historically distinct American-Jewish community and the marked role of religious ideology in community formation and Americanization.

Elizabeth’s Jewish community development divided into three stages: At its peak, Elizabeth contained a Jewish population of 10,000. German Jews came to Elizabeth in the middle of the nineteenth century, but by 1880 only twenty-five families had settled. With the immigration from eastern Europe, the Jewish population grew rapidly, reaching 550 families in 1905, and 10,000 total members by the mid 1930s. While some Jews settled in Elizabeth by the 1860s and 70s, the vast majority arrived closer to the turn of the century, settling in the Port area of downtown Elizabeth, and so the early stage starts with the rise of Jewish immigration, and continues until 1920.

By 1920 immigration had stopped, yet the population continued to increase with the birth of an American born generation. By this point the Jewish community had begun to make inroads into the middle class, but still found themselves stuck between the immigrant and American cultures. This second period runs until the mid- to late 1930s. By the late 1930s the Jewish population increasingly had entered the middle class, and by the 1940s had started to move away from the original area of settlement, towards the more affluent Elmora section of town – about an hour’s walk from the original Elizabethport area.

At the end of the 1940s then, Elizabeth held two Jewish populations, loosely united through certain shared structures such as the Y, or burial societies such as the Gomel Chesed Cemetery Association, but in actuality split into two denominations and philosophies. Yet while these two groups split, breaking the notion of ‘a community’ in Elizabeth, both populations had settled into the American religious community. Questions at home, with the rise of an American born population, and questions abroad with the rise of anti-Semitism and Nazism threatened existing notions of Jewish practice, forcing the immigrants to interpret and define their American-Judaism. This reinterpretation came about during a religious revival in the U.S., especially during WWII and afterwards, when religion and religious difference became a way to understand differing groups, and also to understand America’s place versus the atheistically perceived Soviet Union. In this sense the process of Americanization in Elizabeth had as much to do with settling into American society as American religious society, and by the 1950s, although the population had moved much farther apart from each other, they had become a part of the American religious community, as American- rather than immigrant- Jews.

WHOSE OLD NEIGHBORHOOD?
JUNE 11, 2005 – BONNELL HOUSE, ELIZABETH NJ

A DISCUSSION OF CATHERINE/WILLIAM STREETS NEIGHBORHOOD

NATIONAL ORIGINS

NATIONAL ORIGINS OF HOUSEHOLD HEADS
CATHERINE/ WILLIAM STS – Elizabeth, NJ 1910-1930

HOUSEHOLD HEADS OCCUPATIONS

B. OCCUPATIONS OF HOUSEHOLD HEADS, CATHERINE/WILLIAM ST NEIGHBORHOOD, Elizabeth, NJ 1910-1930

The question, Whose Old Neighborhood?, itself documents an important transition: someone who remembers a neighborhood well and likely for a long time perceives a challenge to established patterns. The question points to a major feature of most 20th century neighborhoods: they change and one group who once took ownership for granted sees not only changes but ignorance and misinformation about the incoming dynamics of well-loved places. Whose Old Neighborhood is part of a larger discussion about Whose Tradition will receive ongoing respect and remembrance. The questions are basic features of any effort to create a new urban narrative, a major objective of the Elizabeth Historical Society.

This morning we are going to focus on the Catherine and William Sts Neighborhood, in part, to get our own bearings. The Historical Society took ownership of Bonnell House, where we have gathered this morning, in September 2003 but we are latecomers to both this area and to Bonnell House’s history which began before 1682, 313 years ago. In that span of time how many “Old Neighborhood” memories have come and gone?
Let me begin with some early 20th century patterns of this neighborhood that we have documented from the US Federal Census records. The Catherine/Williams St neighborhood, like the Elizabeth Train Station north of it, had a sizeable group of native New Jerseyans for the whole period under scrutiny: 1910-1930 (from 41 to 35%). However, probably because of its proximity to the Train Station, the William Stresidents in particular, contained substantive numbers of household heads who managed businesses or who served as skilled labor in local oil refineries, wire manufacturing and of course Singer Sewing Machine Co. Williams St in particular housed a number of individuals who registered their occupation as “machinists.”

It is however an important and bracing reminder that the rise of civil rights, one of the pre-eminent citizen-driven movements in America’s 20th century history, rested abjectly on informal domestic patterns that preceded activist organizations. Most importantly they rested on ordinary routines of average citizens who drew upon their locally grown strengths to argue that some aspects of the “old neighborhood” needed replacing in the 20th century. When we ask “whose old Neighborhood” it is imperative to acknowledge that every ethnic and racial tradition will likely have a different answer. It will be incumbent upon us all who explore the question to reconstruct each neighborhood, making a place for the multiple perspectives that an aged Bonnell House and an aged Elizabeth NJ always reflect. What we have tried to demonstrate today are select, documentable features of a neighborhood history rather than a definitive perspective on its past. Our history is an ongoing process. How we register and incorporate our knowledge, how we keep ourselves open to traditions not yet registered, will determine the authority of a new urban narrative. Here we conclude this tentative approach to the history of the Catherine/ William Street neighborhood and hope in the subsequent discussion we can enhance our story with your reactions.

Before discussion begins the Society would like to extend its sincere thanks to our Community Treasure interviewees: