On March 27, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a young visionary pastor and civil rights leader from Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia arrived in Newark, New Jersey for a visit. At the time of his visit to Newark, the City was frightened and fractured, emerging from the 1967 Newark Riots that killed 28 people, injured 725 people, and inflicted $10 million in property damage.
On April 4, 1968, only eight days after his visit to Newark, Dr. King was assassinated at the age of 39 in Memphis. The City of Newark, New Jersey has the distinction of being among Dr. King’s final audiences.
Forty years later in 2008 as Newark’s murder rate soars, there is a new generation of “street preachers” who are devoted to remembering Dr. King’s dream. Newark’s Afro-American pastors are rekindling his voice and vision for non-violence and are mobilizing their congregations to get off the sidelines and into the streets to “stop the killings”.
D.R. Hernandez, the film’s Director and Executive Producer, a Newark native and former Police Captain, embedded herself for ten months with four Newark Afro-American Pastors as they preached in their churches and in the deadly streets, where urban street gangs rule and violence, poverty, and innocent bloodshed are intertwined with deadly results. They visited the crime scenes and memorials where the gang-related killings took place; marched to “take back the streets for Jesus”; and prayed openly to God for guidance to rekindle Dr. Martin Luther King’s voice and vision for non-violence. A riveting street testimonial from a former gang member who survived a near death experience after being shot more than 10 times and left paralyzed, is one of the chilling highlights of this 90-minute, spiritually moving urban crime documentary film “NEWARK STREET PREACHERS”.
A BLUE FORCE FILMS PRODUCTION, 2008
An Independent Feature Documentary Film
Genre: Urban, Crime, Spiritual
Running Time: 49 Minutes
SYNOPSIS:
