On This GroundOn This Ground

In 1967, as the city of Newark, New Jersey, was engulfed by civil unrest after the beating of a Black cab driver by white police officers, the monks of Newark Abbey stood on the roof of the monastery and watched their city burn. In the years that followed, some of the monks voted to leave, and St. Benedict's Prep, the school they had run for over a century, was forced to close its doors. Journalist Anthony DePalma tells the story of the monks who voted to stay put, who would soon reopen St. Benedict's and devote their lives to educating the students who had become their neighbors.