NJ Most Eminent Activist Larry Hamm Releases Book

NEW JERSEY-It’s not just Larry Hamm’s story: it’s the story of the cooperation and dedication that it takes to craft lasting change in the world. Larry Hamm is a US Senate candidate along with Patricia Campos-Medina is trying to replace US Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) this year. On March 9, 2024, he held a book launch event for his autobiography, “Lawrence Hamm: A Life In The Struggle,” at the Newark Public Library. The event took place in the library’s James Brown African American Room located on Washington Street.

Larry Hamm, who wrote the book with co-author Annette Alston, said it covers his life as a longtime social justice activist in NJ. It spans a time period that includes his first protest as a high school student in 1971 until more recent struggles against police brutality.

The book explores his participation in the Black Power movement after his appointment at age 17 to the Newark Board of Education by the city’s first Black mayor, Kenneth Gibson. It made him the youngest school board member in the nation. It looks at the three “tumultuous” years he spent on the school board, Hamm said.

It also discusses the influence of writer and activist Amiri Baraka on Hamm’s political development and struggles in which they both participated. Hamm was the youngest elected delegate to the 1972 National Black Political Convention held in Gary, Indiana and spearheaded by Amirir Baraka.

The book also talks about Hamm’s role in the campus anti-apartheid movement to get Princeton to divest its stock holdings in companies doing business with the racist apartheid regime in South Africa, and delves into his struggle to build the People’s Organization For Progress, an all-volunteer grassroots group that fights for economic justice, police brutality and other issues impacting the Black community.

“I agreed to write this book because I thought it was important to tell the story of some of the struggles I have been involved in during the past half century and some of the lessons I have learned from them,” Hamm said.

“This is not just my story,” he continued. “It is the story of many, many people with whom I have worked side by side to try to bring about change at local, state, national, and international levels.”

Lawrence Hamm’s life links the most powerful social movements of the last 50 years. practical public policy concerns. A candidate in NJ’s Democratic primary for the US Senate in 2020, has been involved in every major social movement in the state for the last fifty years. A graduate of Princeton University, he was part of the student leadership cadre that had a major campus anti-apartheid protest in the 1970s, years before the anti-apartheid movement became dominant on American campuses. He founded the People’s Organization for Progress in 1983. People’s Organization for Progress, an independent, grassroots organization, became a recognized leader in NJ’s anti-apartheid and Million Man March movements. He led community support of landmark legislation sponsored by former Assemblyman Willie B. Brown to require the State of NJ to divest its pensions and holdings in the illegal and Immoral government of South Africa in the 1980s.

A proud father of three daughters who are Rutgers graduates, he has been involved in fighting for quality education, employment opportunities and access to health care and against racial profiling and police brutality. People’s Organization for Progress, joined by Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and other activist organizations, led a successful, nonviolent protest and rally in Newark of more than ten thousand after the 2020 murder of George Floyd.

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