Newark's Living Mayors: Ken Gibson

Newark Today

Programming Note: Ken Gibson will join us this Friday, February 3rd at 8pm as Newark Today Presents "The Four Living Mayors". He will be joined by fellow former mayors Sharpe James, US Senator Cory Booker and current mayor Ras Baraka for what will be a historic night. Ken Gibson was elected as Newark’s first African American mayor in 1970. A transitional period for Newark; the city was in recovery from the 67’ rebellion. “Everybody thought that everything was racial and it wasn’t. Everybody said that we had snipers in the streets and we didn’t. They said black people could not achieve, and they still say that today and that’s not true. They told me that I could never become mayor, and I became mayor,” Gibson told WBGO in a 2015 interview. Gibson earned respect and popularity on a national scale. In 1976, he became president of the US Conference of Mayors. It was then Gibson made famous the phrase ‘Wherever the central cities of America are going, Newark will get there first.’ “I went