News — New Jersey

The Shady Rest Golf & Country Club in Scotch Plains, New Jersey is the oldest African American golf club in the United States. It was the mecca of black middle-class society in New Jersey from the 1920s to the 1960s with members traveling from as far as the Carolinas to enjoy its amenities.

The land, previously the Ephraim Tucker Farm, was a 31-acre plot which was sold to the Westfield Golf Club whose members then converted it into a nine-hole golf course, keeping the farmhouse as its new clubhouse. On September 21, 1921, a group of black investors known as the Progressive Realty Company, Inc., including Scotch Plains resident Henry Willis Sr., purchased the club and renamed it the Shady Rest Golf and Country Club.

Designed to provide a recreational facility to its members during a time of intense racial segregation, many African American residents from surrounding New Jersey communities were able to partake in the clubs’ activities such as golfing, croquet, skeet shooting, horseback riding, and tennis. A Place For Us was its motto as many prominent black activists such as W.E.B. DuBois lectured there. And as a result of its location, just thirty miles west of New York City and its inclusion in The Negro Motorist Green Book, the clubhouse became a haven for many prominent black entertainers such as Cab Calloway, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Billy Eckstein, Count Basie, Sarah Vaughn, Chick Webb, and Billie Holiday. They all came to perform there while enjoying the exclusivity that Shady Rest provided. In addition, Ora Washington and Althea Gibson, the first African Americans to win a grand slam title, honed their skills on its tennis pavilion.

The golf course was home to the first National Colored Golf Championship held in 1925 and sponsored by the United States Colored Golfers Association which had been founded earlier that year and led by its president, B.C. Gordon. Gordon was also the president of Shady Rest. Its head professional golfer, John Shippen, served as its groundskeeper. In 1896, Shippen was the first African American professional golfer to play in the U.S. Open. Shippen, an African American of Jamaican descent, played in five U.S. opens before settling in Scotch Plains in 1931 and managing Shady Rest until his retirement in 1960.

In 1964, after a legal battle, the township of Scotch Plains gained ownership of the Club and made the grounds public and racially integrated. It also changed the name to the Scotch Hills Golf and Country Club. The Club House still survives. When under a threat of demolition in 2013, local residents formed The Preserve Shady Rest Committee and raised money to have the clubhouse renovated and restored. It now includes a small museum dedicated to John Shippen and his contribution to golf history. Shady Rest is currently on the list of endangered landmarks in New Jersey in anticipation of being declared a historical landmark.

Sundiata Acoli, a former Black Panther member who was convicted of murder in 1974 and has been denied parole multiple times, will go before New Jersey’s Supreme Court this year to win his freedom, The Washington Post reports. Acoli is serving a life sentence for the 1973 murder of a New Jersey state trooper during a shootout in which Assata Shakur, the self-exiled aunt of Tupac Shakur, was also arrested. Shakur escaped in 1979 and fled to Cuba, where she was granted political asylum.

Acoli has been eligible for parole since 1992 but has been denied so many times. “You can have someone elderly who may still be dangerous in some rare cases, but that is not this man. I mean, he has not had a single problem of any kind in prison for 25 years,” Bruce Afran, Acoli’s attorney, told The Washington Post. “Frankly, the reason they’re denying him parole is because a state trooper was killed. I can think of no other reason for this treatment,” he said.

In the 1970s when the black liberation fighters’ struggle was at its peak in the United States, it gave birth to militant groups like Philadelphia-based MOVE founded by John Africa in 1972 and the Black Panther Party founded in late October 1966 by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. The Black Panthers’ militant wing was called the Black Liberation Army.

Acoli, a member of the Black Liberation Army, was on May 2, 1973, driving just after midnight when a state trooper, James Harper, stopped him for a “defective taillight”. Acoli was then in the vehicle with two others — Assata Shakur and Zayd Malik Shakur — who were also members of the Black Liberation Army. Harper was joined by another trooper, Werner Foerster, at the scene. Foerster then found an ammunition magazine for an automatic pistol on Acoli. A shootout ensued; Foerster died in the process and Harper was wounded.

Assata Shakur was arrested while Zayd Malik Shakur was found dead near the car. Acoli fled but was caught some hours later. Acoli and Shakur were convicted of the murder of Foerster in separate trials. Acoli said he did not remember what happened as he passed out after being hit by a bullet. In 1974, Acoli was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life with the possibility of parole after 25 years. Acoli became eligible for parole in 1992 but was not allowed to take part in his own parole hearing. All in all, he has been denied parole eight times. His lawyer, Afran, said each time he is denied, the reason given is the same — “he hasn’t done enough psychological counseling; he doesn’t fully admit to his crime, or he hasn’t adequately apologized for it,” according to the Post.

Tony Ciavolella, a board spokesman, told the Post: “Denials of his parole were decided upon impartially, fairly, and . . . in accordance with statutory and administrative regulations.”

In 2014, a state appellate panel ruled that Acoli should be released, citing good behavior since 1996. The state Attorney General’s office however contested and the case was sent back to the board. Again, it denied Acoli’s request. Acoli is currently appealing that decision. “Sundiata’s case is a glaring example of the need for parole reform in New Jersey and throughout the United States,” said Joseph J. Russo, Deputy Public Defender in the New Jersey Office of the Public Defender’s Appellate Section.

In 2020, Acoli contracted Covid-19 and was hospitalized, his lawyers said, adding that he suffers from early-stage dementia and has hearing problems.

A Black New Jersey man who reportedly spent 10 days in jail after he was misidentified by facial recognition technology is suing the police and prosecutors.

According to NBC News, Nijeer Parks was misidentified by the software as a suspect who was wanted for shoplifting at a hotel in a 2019 incident. The 33-year-old, in the civil lawsuit filed in Passaic County, stated that his grandmother – on January 30, 2019 – informed him of an arrest warrant for him for allegedly shoplifting at a gift store at Hampton Inn in Woodbridge, and then hitting a police vehicle as he escaped. However, Parks said he neither owned a car nor even had a driver’s license in early 2019.

When he went to the Woodbridge police headquarters on February 5 to try and clear his name, he was rather taken into custody. “As he had previously told the clerk, plaintiff told the interrogators that [he] had never had a driver’s license, that he had never owned a car, and that he had never even been in Woodbridge,” Parks’ attorney, Daniel Sexton, stated in the lawsuit. “Plaintiff also gave … a solid alibi that proved he could not have done what he was suspected of doing.”

Despite that, Parks said he spent 10 days in jail, and the police as well as prosecutors failed to check DNA and fingerprints from the crime scene to corroborate his claim. “Defendant police department was relying solely on the faulty and illegal [facial recognition software] or some analogous program while all evidence and forensics confirmed plaintiff had no relationship to the suspect for the crimes,” Sexton wrote, NBC News reported.

Charges against him were, however, later dropped.

Critics have long argued facial recognition technology is skewed. Over the years, various studies have provided proof that facial recognition tools are often biased against minorities. A 2019 study by the National Institute of Standards and Technology found that though the technology works relatively well on White men, it provides less accurate results for other demographics, and experts have blamed this on a lack of diversity in the images used to develop the databases.

A staff lawyer for the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, Nathan Freed Wessler, told NBC News Parks’ detention was due to “flawed and privacy-invading surveillance technology.”

“There are likely many more wrongful interrogations, arrests, and possibly even convictions because of this technology that we still do not know about,” Wessler said. “This technology disproportionately harms the Black community.”

As there are no federal laws on the use of facial recognition technology in the US, states and cities have been stepping in to regulate it. In September, the city of Portland passed what is regarded as the strictest facial recognition ban in the United States. Last year, San Francisco also became the first major city in the country to ban its police department and agencies from using it.