Lawrence Hamm

Lawrence Hamm's life links the most powerful social movements of the last 50 years. Appointed to the Newark, New Jersey Board of Education in 1971 at the age of 17, he balanced the radical world of Newark's Black Power Movement with a racially-divided city's practical public policy concerns. What were his rewards? Harsh criticism in the press, dropping out of Princeton University, being publicly attacked by the man who appointed him--Kenneth Gibson, Newark's first Black mayor--and an attempted framing on a gun he never had. It's the story of how one man juggled Princeton, the power and contradictions of the People's Struggle, employment in corporate America, marriage and fatherhood, with some days being better than others. His greatest accomplishment was helping to found the People's Organization for Progress, a grassroots activist group that for the past 39 years has been a fixture in New York tri-state area activist circles. From fighting to free Mandela in the 1970s and 1980s to protesting local police brutality cases in George Floyd/Breonna Taylor 2020 and beyond, this autobiography--an intimate portrait of one man who took his elite education, tremendous oratory skills and well-honed stamina and created a transmutational spear from it--documents how he always knew his journey meant nothing without the People.