The Times' "Newark Examines Deadly Riots": -- called it a riot. But even that word is fraught with contradictions. Who did the rioting? Was it black residents of Newark's central ward ghetto? Or was it the police and the National Guard. The Kerner Commission report got it right labeling it a police riot. Or did we forget?

Tom Hayden, then a young community organizer in Newark, wrote a book called "Rebellion In Newark" about those events. His attempt at instant history -- to portray the riots as a protest -- resonated with the spirit of the era, including the efforts to bring the southern civil rights movement into northern cities, to confront the political and business establishment around issues of housing segregation, schools, and jobs. It was a period or rising expectations but also dashed hopes, as LBJ's war on poverty was diverted by the war in Vietnam. In hindsight, we can see that Hayden's analysis was misguided. A rebellion implies that a large numbers of residents refuse to accept the rule of the established authority and they are led by a group of rebel leaders in a sustained attempt to overthrow that power. But there was no such group of rebel leaders in Newark. The Newark riots didn't lead to a sustained effort to build a grassroots movement for political change. In fact, history tells us that riots don't bring about hope or positive change. If anything, by creating a backlash in the larger community, riots stall positive reforms rather than accelerate them. The deeper social logic in response to riots is retrenchment and reaction. Public opinion becomes polarized. The flight of the middle class and business from the cities accelerates. This in turn undermines the fiscal capacity of cities to meet basic needs.

What could the activist community have done? That's a tough question to answer.