Black History and Plainfield

Call it Black History Month or African-American Heritage Month, either way February is the month to recognize both the struggles and victories of people of color.

In Plainfield, the "white flight" of the 1960s left the city a predominantly black community. Since then, black leadership has emerged to the point where blacks dominate all the city's major agencies - school board, City Council, PMUA. This even though between 2000 and 2010, the black population dropped from 60 percent to 48.3 percent at the same time that the Latino population increased by 67 percent to 40.4 percent. The white population, formerly the contrast to the black community (or, as Jay Jefferson Cooke liked to define it, the brother man and the other man) dropped to 8.3 percent in the 2010 census.

 The black majority is not without its internal strife. In the bitterly fought 2013 mayoral race, the incumbent expected to benefit by a visit from Rev. Al Sharpton, who predictably drew a line within the black community to separate blacks from "Negroes," those who did not agree with him in supporting the incumbent. Well, she lost, but the battle goes on in a constant stream of attacks on the winner.

A year has passed since Mayor Adrian O. Mapp took office and yet in January some anonymous person posted this comment to the blog : "Mapp doesn't recognize the black population 55 percent and we will make sure they know that." Besides the odd allegation against a black mayor, one wonders who the "we" is. Might it be one of the speakers who regularly harp on race and class at the public microphone? Maybe one who just can't stand the thought of "One Plainfield, One Future" for Plainfield but would rather have each group off in its own corner?

Notwithstanding the present political battles, the history of Plainfield is replete with figures to celebrate during Black History Month. There are sports champions, scientists, authors and many who struggled for equality and black rights. The late Rasheed Abdul-Haqq campaigned to have the high school named for James West..When I first came to Plainfield in the 1980s, I was impressed by Rev. Frank Allen, a Garveyite who had great ambitions for the local NAACP branch.
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Given the political enmity that some would foster in the city, it might be a very long time before there is one Plainfield and one future, but meanwhile the community can still celebrate Black History Month - maybe starting with the city's own history makers of the 20th Century.  Marshall Brown, Freeman Whetstone, Westry Horne, M. Elizabeth Chitty, George Clinton, Joe Black, Vic Washington, Bernie Worrell, Everett Lattimore and Ernie Scott are among those who come to mind.

--Bernice