Stalling air traffic at Newark Airport was not part of Gustav Heningburg’s plan for integrating the facility’s construction crews in 1972, it just happened.
“It was an impulse,” explained 18-year Secaucus resident Gustav Heningburg who has been active in civil rights since the late 1950s. “I didn’t walk out onto the run way, I went on a ramp.”
For a few minutes flights were delayed as workers got Heninburg, referred to as a “foreign object,”
off the tarmac. Previous to his action, Heningburg said he had been dealing with between 40 to 50 Port Authority bureaucrats to accomplish his integration aims.
“The next morning I had a meeting with Austin Tobin, the director of the Port Authority [at the time],” Heningburg said. When the struggle was over, not only were the airport’s construction crews integrated, but 11 minority-operated businesses had been established at the facility.
For this and many other accomplishments, Gustav Heningburg will be honored at a public gala roast on Wednesday, June 5 at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center starting at 5:30 p.m. Paying tribute to Heninburg will be former New Jersey Governors Thomas Kean and Brendan Byrne, along with former New York City Mayor David Dinkins, with proceeds to benefit the Gustav Heningburg Civic Fellows Program.
Uncomfortable, but flattering was how Heningburg described his reaction to such organized acclaim, noting this was one of three he had recently received.
“My brother sent me an email from Maryland saying either everyone loves you or you are getting old, which is it?” Heningburg related. “I said both.”
Son of a college instructor and an Alabama native, Heningburg has worked as a social activist for organizations like the United Negro College Fund and the NAACP, but he relates his efforts for integration at Newark Airport with vivid detail.
“Tobin didn’t disagree that integration in the construction crews was a problem,” Heningburg elaborated. “But he said it was a bigger problem than us.”
This meant a meeting with then Attorney General John Mitchell, attended also by John McNaughton of the Greater Newark Urban Coalition.
“Mitchell puffed his pipe and made notes,” said Heningburg. “He said it would be handled by the Community Relations section of the Justice Department, which handled civil rights problems at the time.”
The Justice Department dispatched 19 deputy attorney generals to New Jersey to file suit against the unions that would not integrate, Heningburg explained, adding consent decrees were obtained for integration. “Right now there are 900 minority owned businesses in airports across the county, which we helped pioneer.”
Originally Heningburg planned a career in the US Army Intelligence Corps. in which he served for seven years after graduating Hampton Institute in 1950 with chemistry major and math minor.
“My first civilian posting was in Newark after being in Europe and it was in Newark I decided to stay,” Heningburg said. “At least I didn’t have to face chemistry and math.”
Instead, Heningburg had a five-year stint starting in 1957 as director of Alumni Affairs for the United Negro College Fund. In 1963, he began working for the NAACP’s Legal and Defense Educational Fund and was working there when the Newark riots erupted in 1967.
Heningburg felt a number of factors went into triggering the violence in Newark, but at least one factor was related to his later work at Newark Airport. According to Heningburg, plans to build a teaching hospital in downtown Newark, which would displace numerous black families, outraged residents because the construction crews would be all white.
“The people were forced to move and then would see white construction crews coming in and making a lot of money,” said Heningburg.
Soon after the riots, Heningburg was asked to become the first director of the Greater Newark Urban Coalition, a position he held until 1980. “Business and social leaders created the organization because they made an investment in Newark and they did not want it to happen again.”
Heningburg had to figure a way to get Newark’s diverse groups back together again and at first it was difficult.
“There was no model, no city to look to for this, we were winging it,” Heningburg added. What Heningburg did come up with after the riots was the Love Festival held in Weequahic Park. The concert was attended by approximately 63,000 people, according to Heningburg, and came off without a hitch. “This was the first step in healing process for Newark,” Heninburg commented.
People skills served Heningburg well in 1972 when he helped mediate a resolution to the Rahway State prison riot.
“This was six months after the Attica uprising when Nelson Rockefeller sent in the National Guard and the state police and that was not good,” Heningburg explained. “The governor at the time William Cahill did not know what he was going to do, but he was not calling in the state police.”
Henningburg and two other negotiators spoke to the leaders of the prisoners who had taken captive, but not harmed the warden. “We heard what was a common complaint in prisons back then, bad food and bad medical treatment. This happened the day before Thanksgiving. Most of the inmates just wanted it over with.”
Heningburg also made his mark in the media world, hosting the public affairs program “Positively Black” on WNBC-TV in New York from 1971 to 1992. “They called me one night at 10 p.m. asking if I would like to host the show, which had been on for a year,” said Heningburg. “I said ‘It sounds like great fun, I’ll come down when I’m free.’ They told me the program would broadcast at 7 a.m. the next morning. I was there.”
Positively Black allowed Heningburg to interview the likes of Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., social critic Angela Davis and Rev. Jesse Jackson when he was running for President. Heningburg stayed with the television until the station wanted to move it to 6 a.m. in the morning, Heningburg quit, explaining he could bring famous people to a show that aired so early in the morning.
From his long experience, Heningburg advises young people to get a sound education and to “assume that you are as good as the person you are dealing with.”
“You make choices about what you’re going to do, but there are certain basics you have to have,” Heningburg said.