They spent their lifetimes fighting for our rights

By Benjamin St. Jacques, Staff Writer
On July 12, 1967, Newark cab driver John Smith was stopped by two police officers for allegedly passing their cruiser improperly. He was arrested, taken into custody, and severely beaten. Witnesses to Smith’s arrest gathered outside of the station and demanded to know the state of his condition. A rumor circulated that Smith had died while in police custody, despite the fact that he was transported to a local hospital.
The predominantly black residents of Newark were already fed up with police brutality, inadequate housing, unemployment, poverty and exclusion of blacks from city government. But the rumor of Smith’s death was the drop of gasoline that turned an already smoldering ember into a raging bonfire. With Smith believed to be dead, the citizens erupted into a six-day spree of rioting, looting and burning — a period now infamously known as the Newark riots.
Within 48 hours, the National Guard was called in and the level of violence intensified. At the end of the six days, there were more than 20 dead, with hundreds more injured. One of New Jersey’s greatest cities would continue its struggle to recover from that devastation to this day.
The Newark riots, tragic as they were, shined a bright light on the inequalities and injustices being perpetrated on the residents of Newark and other disenfranchised communities. Though in existence for less than a decade, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey took strong action following the riots, demanding police reforms, providing legal counsel to residents and petitioning for a federal takeover of the Newark Police Department.
Now commemorating its 50th anniversary, the ACLU-NJ is saluting 50 people who have shaped New Jersey’s landscape by challenging unjust laws and unconstitutional actions.
Dubbed “The Faces of Liberty,” the personal stories of these unsung heroes embody the ACLU’s principles that civil liberties are the rights of all — regardless of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation or socioeconomic status.
Among The Faces of Liberty are longtime West Orange residents Annamay Sheppard, 83, and Frank Askin, 78, both civil rights attorneys who have devoted their lives to protecting people’s Constitutional rights, even before the founding of the ACLU-NJ in June of 1960.
Still an idealist at heart
“I’ve been interested in civil rights since age 2½,” jokes Sheppard with the wave of her hand. The first real challenge to her rights, as she recalls, occurred when she was a young school teacher in Berkeley, Calif., in the early 1950s.
“Berkeley was a laboratory for what was going on in the country,” she recalls. “The war was over and we were trying to figure out what our rights really meant. McCarthy and other people in power were not in favor of civil rights.”

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