Kenneth Gibson

Kenneth Allen Gibson was born on the fifteenth of May 1932 at the Enterprise neighbourhood of Newark, New Jersey, the elder of two sons of Willie Gibson — a Newark bakery worker who had migrated from Alabama in 1928 — and Daisy Gibson, a homemaker. The Gibson household was working-class Black at the Newark Central Ward. He completed the Newark Central High School in 1950 and entered the Newark College of Engineering in 1951 on a state scholarship. He took the bachelor's of civil engineering in 1962.

He served in the United States Army from 1956 to 1958 as a captain. He returned to Newark on discharge and joined the New Jersey State Highway Department as a structural engineer in 1960. He moved in 1966 to the Newark Housing Authority as chief engineer.

He stood for mayor of Newark in 1966 against the incumbent Hugh Addonizio and lost in the four-candidate field. He stood again in 1970 — six weeks after Addonizio's June 1970 conviction on federal extortion and conspiracy charges — and defeated Addonizio in the run-off by approximately twelve thousand votes. He took office on the first of July 1970 as the first African American mayor of Newark and the first African American mayor of any major Northeastern American city.

His sixteen-year mayoralty across four consecutive terms was conducted under the conditions of the post-1967 Newark riots' reconstruction. He directed the principal post-riot rebuilding programmes of the early 1970s — the Newark Health Center, the renovation of the Newark Public Library system, and the construction of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center planning. He served as president of the United States Conference of Mayors from 1976 to 1977 — the first African American to hold the office.

He stood for a fifth term in 1986 and lost the Democratic primary to Sharpe James.

He was indicted in 2002 on charges of corruption related to a Newark school-construction contract and pleaded guilty in 2002 to one count of tax fraud. He served sixteen months at the federal correctional facility at Lewisburg.

He died at Newark on the twenty-ninth of March 2019, at eighty-six.

He is honored here as the first African American mayor of Newark.