By Joseph Picard
STAFF WRITER
Newark - Carol Raab Davis of Stephan Avenue in Dover Township had not visited
her elementary school, St. Rose
of Lima in Newark, in 40 years when
she returned in October 2002. "I was truly transported back," said Davis, who graduated
from
St. Rose in 1960. "The
rooms were the same. So was the
echo in the hallway. I shut my eyes and recalled so much about my past. |
I looked at
her and thought, 'This is me again.
She and I are the same person.' "The
fact that she was a white, adult suburbanite and theeighth-grader
was an inner-city black girl did not
interfere
with Davis' vision of shared humanity.
In 1967,
however, the year the Raab
family left Newark, racial lines were
starkly drawn in the state's largest city.
In July of that year, Newark erupted
in
five days of violence that left 23 people
dead — all but two of them black
people — 725 injured and more than
$10 million in property damage.
Linda Kaufer,
nee Linda De-Rosa,
St. Rose
Class of 1968 and now a resident of Hazlet,
was 13 and living on Seventh Avenue in
Newark at the time of the riots, a few
blocks
from
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