Steve Bassett was born and raised in Newark’s crime-ridden Third Ward and, although far removed during a career as an award-winning journalist, he has always been proud of the sobriquet Jersey Guy. He has been legally blind for almost a decade, but hasn’t let this slow him down. He received three Emmys for investigative documentaries, and the California Bar Association’s Medallion Award for Distinguished Reporting on the Administration of Justice. Polish on his mother’s side and Montenegrin on his father’s, with grandparents who spoke little or no English, his early outlook was ethnic and suspicious. This iconoclasm is needed if “Father Divine’s Bikes” was to ring true. During his tenure as an Urban Affairs investigative reporter for the Associated Press, he covered urban unrest extensively. In 1967, Newark was devastated by one of the deadliest race riots during that turbulent decade. More than twenty persons were killed and entire neighborhoods reduced to ashes, including the one where he grew up. When he returned to Newark and walked up Springfield Avenue, he was sickened by what he saw. Everything was gone. How did this happen? His book exposes the root causes for this catastrophe.
He has written two nonfiction books, one published by Ashley Books, “The Battered Rich,” and “Golden Ghetto: How the Americans and French Fell In and Out of Love During the Cold War,” published by Red Hen Press under its Xeno imprint. He lives in Placitas, New Mexico with his wife, Darlene Chandler Bassett.
