ROBERT CURVIN authored Inside Newark while a visiting scholar at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University. He passed away in 2015. The New York Times said he was "a fiercely loyal advocate for Newark who never gave up on his troubled city and devoted a scholarly career to alleviating urban poverty."  

Dr. Curvin was a co-founder of the Newark chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality, successfully lobbied to integrate construction jobs in the early 1960s, earned a doctorate from Princeton, helped make Kenneth A. Gibson the first black mayor of a major Northeast city when he won election in Newark in 1970, and was a Ford Foundation official. He also served on the editorial board of The New York Times for nearly six years and was a dean at the New School in Manhattan.