It has been nearly thirty-five years since the civil disorders of 1967 tore through Newark's Central Ward and the media and political leaders wrote Newark off as one of the nation's most hopeless cities.

The disorders that preceded the creation of New Community Corporation left 23 dead, more than 1,000 injured, nearly 1,600 arrested and $15 million in property in ruins. The real toll was far deeper. The disorders were a disaster that threatened lives and homes and tore apart the very fabric of the community.

Shopkeepers fled, most never to return. Residents were left without essential services. There were no homes, no jobs and no hope. The Central Ward of 1967 bore a closer resemblance to the bombed-out cities of Europe after World War II than to the largest city in New Jersey, one of the most prosperous states in the nation.

Damaged by white flight to the suburbs for decades, Newark had hit the bottom. Much of the Central Ward lay in ruins and its residents, mostly poor minorities, desperately needed housing, employment, and social services.

Incumbents in Newark's City Hall showed little interest in neighborhood problems. Little of the Federal anti-poverty money directed to Newark filtered down to benefit the poor. It fell to grass roots citizens to create interest in the plight of their neighborhood and to take the steps to turn things around.

"I used to tell people I was convinced someone was going to put a fence around Newark and we'd end up living on a reservation," says NCC founder Monsignor William J. Linder. "My own thinking was that we needed to get a development corporation committed to low-income neighborhoods, and the disorders forced us to get together and start implementing."

The 1967 disturbances laid bare the pressing needs and outrages of life in Newark, a city without many of the most basic resources and services taken for granted in most urban centers. Huge numbers of people desperately needed work, but there were few jobs. There were growing numbers of young families, but day care was virtually nonexistent and mothers had no place to leave their children. Hospitals were strained by a crush of patients and health care was difficult to obtain. Decent, affordable housing was virtually impossible to come by.

New Community Corporation was born in 1968 from this disorder, poverty and despair. The organization founded by Father Linder and a dedicated group of associates that met at Queen of Angels Church, where he was a young parish priest, had no money and no political influence. It faced overwhelming odds against success.

The original NCC Board of Directors included Willie Wright, President; Timothy Still, Vice President; Elma Bateman, Secretary; Arthur J. Bray, Msgr. Thomas J. Carey, Joseph Chaneyfield, Robert Curvin, Kenneth Gibson and Father Linder.

Their goal was simple and bold: to develop safe, decent and attractive housing for poor residents in a new community within the Central Ward. They sought to use the new housing to spur neighborhood revitalization. To promote interest and pride, they developed a process for community participation in developing the new housing, including actively involving residents in the design process.

They proposed developing a 45-acre tract--South Orange Avenue to the north, 15th Avenue to the south, Jones Street (now Irvine Turner Boulevard) to the east and Bergen Street to the west--covering fourteen city blocks in the heart of the Central Ward.

NCC began by purchasing two acres of land. The Board envisioned the development of this land as a small beginning that would have a significant impact. "The two acres--and from them the entire 45--will stand as a symbol of a community that rebuilt itself physically and spiritually," they wrote.

The early days brought severe challenges. There were numerous confrontations with black nationalist activists who were acquiring a large local following. White conservatives, who were anxious to block political or economic gains by blacks, objected to NCC's efforts to improve life in the Central Ward and to its visible attempts to oppose their racially inflammatory tactics.

There were few models for the kind of resident-led community development NCC was trying to achieve. It took years of struggle to develop housing plans that would be approved by state and federal authorities, to secure financing for construction, and to cultivate skills members would need to undertake the complex task of housing development.

New Community's first housing development opened in 1975. It was followed by a series of family and senior citizen residences that were built and opened through the 1980s and 1990s. In 1985, NCC completed the renovation of its current headquarters, St. Joseph Plaza, in a formerly shuttered church on West Market Street. An extended care facility opened in 1986 and a transitional facility for homeless families in 1989. The New Community Neighborhood Shopping Center, with its inner city Pathmark supermarket, opened its doors in 1990.

The pace and scope of NCC's undertakings mushroomed during the 1990s to include a rapidly expanding presence in health care, a state-of-the-art job training and continuing education facility, one of New Jersey's largest welfare-to-work programs and community-based charter schools.

Over the course of two decades, New Community had become the nation's largest, most comprehensive and accomplished provider of community-based programs and services. Today, it stands as the nation's most compelling model of "critical scale" community-based development.

In the early 2000s, guided by its mission "to help residents of inner cities improve the quality of their lives to reflect individual God-given dignity and personal achievement," New Community is moving forcefully into education, early childhood learning and the expansion of community-based health care. Its latest housing development, the $25 million Community Hills development of two- and three-bedroom town homes provides homeownership opportunities on the site of the former Hayes Homes public housing project, adjacent to the flashpoint of the 1967 disorders.

In its commitment to providing comprehensive and holistic services, NCC is leading the way for the next generation of community-based development.