LOW-INCOME STAGNANT East Orange, NJ

Karsten Prager of TIME'S New York bureau lived until recently in the Riverdale section of The Bronx, a part of the city that is much like a suburb. In East Orange, he found a suburb that is much like a city:

ON the map and on the ground, they congeal into patterns of dense urban settlement on the rim of the New York metropolitan area--Newark and East Orange and Orange and Maplewood and Irvington and Bloomfield and Glen Ridge. There are no green belts, no distinct borders: instead, there are parkways, railroads, and political boundaries that may run through the middle of a block. Main Street in East Orange becomes Main Street in Orange, and except for the change in house numbers, one town melts into another. Near the center of East Orange is a giant cross formed by the interchange between the Garden State Parkway and still incomplete Interstate 280. "Crossroads of New Jersey," they call it. Some crossroads.

East Orange has many faces: the tree-lined streets and substantial houses of the well-heeled First Ward, the old, rundown frame houses of the Fifth Ward, the modern apartment buildings that tower over both. The citizens of East Orange lead parallel but unlinked lives. Some 55% to 60% of them are black, and black-white contacts are guarded. "I have the feeling that people don't quite trust one another,'' says Mrs. Dorothy Scull, a school board member. But there is more to their isolation from one another than race. Many of the homeowners feel that the high-rise dwellers take little interest in the community. Says one white housewife: "Sometimes I get the impression that the only thing they are interested in is their personal safety--more street lights, getting from the front door to the parking lot in one piece." The lines also divide have from have-not, black middle class from black working class.

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"I can still have breakfast in my own backyard," says Mayor William Hart, 45, who is black. "In that sense we are not the city. But we are just a few bricks removed from it." For many of the blacks, East Orange has been the first step out from the city, from Newark or New York, a reach for a suburban hinterland of open space and green grass and fresh air. Once it was that for wealthy whites. Long before World War II, it was a gracious, self-contained suburb with some mansions that verged on the palatial, imposing apartment buildings, a Baptist seminary and Upsala College.

Most of that changed after the war. Black families moved in, looking for better housing and better schools. Whites drifted away toward the shore or to the mountains, either because they felt uncomfortable among the newcomers or because their houses were now too large to manage. For short periods, parts of town were integrated, but in the long run blocks with some black families almost invariably went entirely black. The white middle class thinned out; the black middle class (or would-be middle class) moved in. The racial ratio in the schools changed quickly: 21% black in 1952, 49% in 1962, around 90% today. Most white children switched to private or parochial schools if their parents chose to stay in East Orange.

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The schools are short of classroom space, and there is a drug problem among the young--though no one agrees on its proportions. Several East Orange High students have been hospitalized with drug overdoses. Says Mayor Hart: "What's hurting is that the children have little in terms of recreation. There is no swimming pool, no bowling alley, no dance pavilion, no roller-skating rink.'' The housing shortage is acute. Some 800 families are on the waiting list for public housing. Construction of single-family houses is almost at a standstill--partly because the city's property tax rate, currently $8.31 per $100, is among the highest in the state.

Once, branches of elegant New York City stores lined Central Avenue; now East Orange has little to offer its residents commercially. It has no shopping center of its own. The people of East Orange do their business either in New York or Newark, or at the shopping malls and plazas that have sprung up in the other suburbs. Central Avenue is not dead, but it is decaying.

Despite its problems, East Orange has quite a bit going for it. It is compact, if overcrowded. Unlike neighboring Newark, it has a history of capable, efficient government. It has a stable white and black middle class. There are some extreme views on both sides of the racial fence, but tensions are far lower than in some other Jersey towns--a fact that the mayor attributes to East Orange's high percentage of homeowners. It is still a town in search of itself. As one white resident put it: "We haven't had soul here in 20 years." East Orange used to be middle-to upper-class, staunchly Republican, predominantly white: now it is middle-to lower-class, Democratic, predominantly black. Says Mayor Hart: "This town can go up or down. What we need is money, resources. We have the people--good people who will back you when you call them."

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