Looking back on violence in Trenton after MLK murder

I touched on this the other day in “Split Decision,” but it’s worth revisiting before we get to the meat of this column: As a Generation X white dude, the legacy and meaning of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is slightly lost on me.

Don’t get me wrong; I understand intellectually that King was one of the all-time greats, that his work and leadership were instrumental in allowing African-Americans to gain full legal and moral rights in America. I understand who he was, what he did, how he did it, and why it was so critically important.

In short, I can read history books.

But that’s the rub: To me, born in 1971, it’s all history. King’s life and work falls under the same category as the Roman Empire; namely, I wasn’t around to live through it, to viscerally understand what happened.

And furthermore (and obviously) as a white guy, it’s tough to fully empathize with the black experience in America (no matter how many times I watch “Black Panther.”)

So when my colleague L.A. Parker — who’s been doing tremendous work this week in honor of the 50th anniversary of King’s assassination — asked me to jump in and interview someone he thought would have some insight (basically, a surrogate for me) it didn’t take me but two seconds to say “sure.”

Bob Prunetti. White guy. Born and raised in Trenton. Former 3-time county executive, former head of the MidJersey Chamber of Commerce, current president and CEO of Phoenix Ventures.

Even more important? All this was happening in his formative years. He was in 9th grade at Junior 4 when King was murdered.

“Certainly things were a little bit more volatile,” he said. “And of course we had the full-blown riot in 1968. And every year after that, there were sort of mini-riots, and they were always on the heels of some event, like Dr. King’s murder.”

Sounds horrible. Like a powder keg continuously set to explode. Except ...

“But the interesting thing is between riots, though there was some tension between blacks and whites, we all pretty much got along,” Prunetti said.

But even with the high school being, for the most part, a safe zone — “I was never afraid there, and really didn’t know anyone who was,” he said — there were still geographic limits to how far the kumbaya attitude went in the capital city.

“Blacks pretty much didn’t venture into Chambersburg, and whites pretty much didn’t venture into East Trenton, parts of the North Ward. And that was pretty much the same before and after the riots,” he said.

When King was assassinated, Prunetti said there were no problems at Junior 4, despite problems in the streets.

“I remember reading about the riots,” he said. “It was tense. But the schools were OK.”

Prunetti counted many AfricanAmerican students as friends, people he would see outside of school. But he did recall his experience wasn’t exactly universal.

“You wouldn’t be hanging out when the riots are going on, but we used to sometimes get together on Friday nights with the guys from the football team,” he said. “And that was kind of unique because I was on the football team, Perch (former Trentonian columnist, the late great Tony Persichelli), a bunch of us white guys had relationships with the black players on the team, but yeah, I suppose that wasn’t the norm for the most part.”

Today in Trenton, Prunetti sees the obvious — black and white race relations in the city are much better, but that’s mostly because the demographics have changed. Most white people have left the city, the Italian enclave has moved east to Hamilton.

“If we isolate Trenton, race relations aren’t a huge issue, but certainly, the stereotypes are still there, that it’s dangerous, that there’s gangs … and yeah, while there’s some truth to that, we’re really no different than any other urban center,” he said. “But it’s exacerbated in Trenton because there’s not much else going on. There’s no critical mass in Trenton for people to come from outside of Trenton. There’s no entertainment district, no shopping district. It’s an issue of economics, not of race. However, if you look at things like Art All Night, people come from all over. We clearly need to create areas, districts, neighborhoods that are welcoming in the sense that there are something there for people to visit and, more importantly, to live. Need to create areas where young people can live in good housing and be able to walk the neighborhoods for bars, restaurants, shopping whatever. But I don’t think race has much to do with that today. It’s strictly economics.”

It’s something I’ve long said myself. While King may have helped to begin to even the playing field between blacks and whites, new form of racism, based on economics, is the next hurdle to get over.

Trenton 50 years ago was wildly different than it is today. Who knows what the city will look like 50 years in the future, but there’s no reason to not have high hopes.