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Booker honors history as he makes it
(by Mark J. Bonamo - February 20, 2008)
Newark Mayor Cory Booker makes an impression when he walks into a room. As the chief executive of New Jersey’s largest city and as a young African-American politician with the potential for higher office, people tend to notice him. But when Booker, 38, took the stage of the packed Anna Maria Ciccone Theatre at Bergen Community College (BCC) on Feb. 12, something else was immediately noticeable. Fire burned in his words and in his blue-green eyes when he spoke about the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the man whose legacy Booker came to praise, preserve and propel forward.
“I don’t really subscribe to the great man theory of history,” said Booker, speaking as part of a month-long celebration of Black History Month at the college. “I really think that history is about ordinary people who are doing extraordinary things to help this country change. And the root of that is always individuals that have been willing to sacrifice for the struggle.”
“As Frederick Douglass said so eloquently: ‘If there is no struggle, there is no progress,’” Booker continued. “And King said, ‘Change will never roll in on the wheels of inevitability. It must be carried in on the backs of people that are willing to fight for it, to struggle for it and sacrifice for it.’ What gets me excited and energized is not only having a present day where I can look around and see heroic heroes of hope, leviathans of love and practitioners of poignant, powerful, living prayer. But I also get to pull those people from the stream of our history.”
Booker may say that a solitary historical theory is not for him. But he came to BCC at a unique moment when history may be pulling at him. And judging from the reaction of the 400 people plus who came to hear him, Booker’s role in the history of his people, his state and beyond may rise, whether he is ready or not.
Bergen County: Booker’s boyhood home
Despite his current Newark address, Booker has driven down Route 4 before. He grew up in middle-class comfort in Harrington Park. His parents, Cary and Carolyn Booker, were both IBM executives hired under a program designed to include African-Americans in the company’s upper management and who were both veterans of the civil rights struggle in the South in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Together they raised Cory and his older brother Cary Jr. with great expectations for academic, professional and personal achievement.
Booker took those expectations with him to Northern Valley Regional High School at Old Tappan, where he was an all-state football player and the president of his senior class. After playing football for four years at Stanford, where he was again the president of his senior class, Booker put down the pigskin and picked up the leather-bound books at Yale Law School, graduating in 1997. In between Stanford and Yale, Booker was a Rhodes Scholar at England’s Oxford University.
Despite such an impressive academic background, Booker himself often maintains that his real education came after he moved to Newark in 1995 and began his political career. Following a bruising failed attempt to unseat his predecessor Sharpe James in 2002, a campaign documented in the Academy Award-nominated 2005 documentary Street Fight, Booker came back to win a resounding victory in 2006. James chose not to run in that election. He was indicted in July 2007 by a federal grand jury and charged with 25 counts of corruption.
Booker now presides over a city struggling to turn the corner on crime, unemployment, and a myriad of other issues. Buoyed by the announcement on the morning of his BCC speech that Newark had gone more than a month without a homicide - a satisfying statistic not seen for more than a decade in the city - Booker spoke to his diverse audience about facing civic challenges.
“I believe in impossible things,” he said. “I believe that human history in general, and black history in particular, is a glorious testimony to the perpetual achievement of the impossible. But I also know that you cannot stop struggle. You cannot stop sacrifice. You cannot stop working because this nation is not done yet. It is not a perfect reflection of our highest ideals…The struggle for ultimate freedom is continuing in America today.”
Newark now, but what’s down the road?
During the question-and-answer session after Booker’s speech, BCC history Professor Kil J. Yi noted U.S. Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and inferred that Booker may one day consider the same path. Booker delicately demurred concerning a post-Obama Oval Office run.
“Success should be not be defined by a position,” he said. “Success should be defined by a purpose. Right now, my overwhelming passion is the transformation of the city of Newark. In 2010, I hope that the voters will return me to office for another term so I can focus on helping this country by dealing with urban reform. After that, I will look around to do other things.”
“Maybe I’ll try to get married and have a kid,” Booker added with a smile, nodding over to his mother and father sitting in the audience.
After her son was done answering questions, Mrs. Booker spoke to Hackensack Chronicle about her son’s future with a maternal eye on keeping him grounded.
“To see the paradigm shift that’s happened in this country with Barack Obama’s candidacy shows that people really are judging us by the content of our character and not the color of our skin, “ Booker, 68, said. “We are seeing history being made. I like Cory’s approach to his future. He always says you start planning everything that you want to do, that’s a great way to make God laugh. It’s about sticking to the challenge at hand and being willing to have the faith to wait and see what opens up beyond that in terms of what is the next service that you can render.”
Dr. Cornel West is not unfamiliar with bringing questions of faith into America’s political conversation. Professor of religion and African American studies at Princeton University, West, 54, has been a strong public supporter of Sen. Obama. A noted author and public speaker, who also achieved a degree of pop culture notoriety by appearing in The Matrix film sequels, West was the keynote speaker at Newark’s annual celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy on Feb. 10. After the event, West spoke with Hackensack Chronicle first about Obama’s role in the nation’s political consciousness, then looked at what Booker’s role might be in the future.
“Obama is at this moment the agent of unbelievable collective hope and vision for an America hungry for hope and vision,” he said. “Cory is already the agent of hope and vision on a local level. There’s no doubt about that. The question is being able to remain tied to everyday people and at the same time being able to negotiate in high places connecting those negotiations to the problems of everyday people.”
Post-racial politics?
Many political observers have pointed to the rise of both Obama and Booker, two African-American politicians whose appeal transcends race, as an example of the onset of post-racial politics in American life. After Newark’s MLK celebration, Booker begged to differ.
“I don’t think that there should ever be a post-racial politics,” he said to Hackensack Chronicle. “I think that we should be focusing on the politics of community. America is so many different races, cultures and ethnicities. That’s the beauty of our country. I don’t think that anybody should ever transcend their ethnicity, whether you are Irish, Korean or African-American. Be proud of who you are. But ultimately, there has to be a recognition that we all are one nation with one destiny.”
West offered Hackensack Chronicle a sharper refutation of the concept of post-racial politics.
“I don’t like that term,” he said. “You work through race, you don’t deny race. It’s the difference between being color-blind and love-struck. You see, if I love you, I don’t need to eliminate your whiteness. If you love me, you don’t need to eliminate my blackness. You embrace humanity.”
They don’t live in Newark, but audience votes for Booker
Toward the end of his speech at BCC, Booker asked his audience to embrace the idea of public service.
“Black history is not simply something to look back upon and celebrate,” he said. “I was listening to Cornel West the other day, and he said that we can’t have the ‘Santa Clausification’ of people like Dr. King and others. We have to make sure that history doesn’t die by making it live within us.”
Booker reiterated his position on who really makes history by referring to the words of civil rights activist Stokely Carmichael.
“We are the leaders we have been looking for,” he said. “Look in the mirror and see that you are greater than Martin Luther King Jr., bolder than Fannie Lou Hamer and stronger than Frederick Douglass. You have all that they have already written into your DNA, and you have a future that’s greater, grander and with more opportunities than they ever had.”
Nina Baiardi, 26, of Hackensack, was glad that she had the opportunity to hear Booker speak.
“To a student planning to be an early child educator, his ideas are a great reminder about the importance of standing up for what you believe in and going through with it,” she said. “I think that he can go wherever the sky takes him.”
Nursing student Michele Graham, 38, had a more specific destination in mind after listening to Booker.
“In terms of African-American history, he fits in with all the generations,” she said. “He is a product and a representation of our forefathers: Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers, Malcolm X. I see him one day as the President of the United States.”
E-mail: bonamo@northjersey.com
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