753 Walnut Street Camden N.J.
Residence of Martin Luther King, Jr. 1950-1952
MLK in
Camden - The Story Thus Far
William E. Kelly, Jr.
Billkelly3@gmail.com
CAMDEN,
N. J. Birmingham, Memphis and Selma are well-known
places in the history of civil rights in America, but few have ever heard of
Maple Shade or Camden, and put them in the same category, until now, as the
story is still unfolding.
In June
1950, when young seminary student Michael King signed his name to an official complaint,
- the first such civil rights legal action he would take, he listed his legal
residence as 753 Walnut Street, Camden, N.J., a few miles away.
Today,
more than sixty-five years later, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Camden residence
will be saved from demolition, restored to its 1950era ambiance, and serve as a
civil rights museum, community center and tourist attraction in one of the
city's most blighted neighborhoods. How this all came about is a story unto
itself.
As is
often the case it began a few years ago when local
South Jersey car
salesman and amateur historian Patrick Duff went looking for something else –
attracted to Maple Shade as a town that called Duff’s attention because of its overzealous
fear of the Ebola virus. While doing a basic background check on the town that truly
is shaded by streets lined with trees, he came across an article “The Bar that
Started a Crusade,” that told the story of how Martin Luther King, Jr. had been
unceremoniously tossed out of a neighborhood bar and made a big stink of it in
court, thus, at first glance, tarnishing the town’s image.
Although
the roadside cafe bar called Mary's Place, and later known as the Morristown
Pub was purchased by the N.J. Department of Transportation and torn down a few
years before Duff began his crusade, he went to the Maple Shade city council.
At first they were cool to Duff’s proposal to make the clover leaf location of Mary's
Place a public park, place an historic marker on the spot and highlight its
significance. But he also convinced a Morristown architecture firm to design
the park pro-bono, and found a sympathetic ear in the Maple Shade city manager.
While at
city hall early one MLK holiday Duff asked for and got a copy of the original June
1950 complaint, signed by King and three companions - fellow Crozer student
Walter McCall, social worker Doris Wilson and Pearl Smith, a Philadelphia
policewomen.
What
jumped out at Duff was the address King gave as his residence - 753 Walnut
Street, Camden, the same address as McCall.
When Duff
tracked down the owner of the now boarded up row house, Jeanette Kill Hunt, and
asked her if she had any association with Martin Luther King, she replied,
"Well he used to live in my house."
She
recalled King living there when she was a young girl, saying King and McCall
rented a back room from her father, a relative of McCall. "In those days, anyone was welcome in our house,” she said. “It
had what we called a swinging door. My cousin Walter (McCall) was King's
friend, and the two of them lived in the back room upstairs on and off for two
years while they were in school."
Duff and
an Inquirer reporter went to the 753 Walnut Street address and found a boarded
up row house covered with graffiti and drug gang symbols, its side and back
yard littered with fast food wrappers and used needles, surrounded by boulder
strewn boulders, bricks and broken glass. The house, abandoned for 20 years,
was a crack house, its only saving grace was that it was attached as a duplex
to a house where someone lived.
Once Duff
discovered the building's historic significance he had a hard time convincing
state preservation officers, city historians and even longtime neighbors that
Martin Luther King, Jr. actually lived there and the building was worth saving.
The state wanted documentation, the city historians were incredulous, and the
neighbors said they just didn't remember King walking their streets. Shortly
after Duff began to seek the historical designation that would preserve it the
city ordered the building razed as part of its efforts to counter blighted and
abandoned buildings.
Then Duff
got the attention of Camden mayor Dana Redd and powerful political boss Rep.
Donald Norcross, both of whom wrote letters to the state department requesting
the historical designation. Norcross then got his fellow Congressman Rep.
John Lewis (D. Ga.), a friend and King colleague, to support the preservation
effort, and all three recently spoke at a September 19 press conference in front of the house calling
for its preservation.
"This
place of historic real estate must be saved for generations unborn," said
Lewis, who was in the area to receive the Liberty Medal at the Constitution
Center in Philadelphia, a prestigious award that has also been given to the
Dali Lama.
Lewis
said that it was important to save the house as an historic site because,
"Martin Luther King, Jr. didn't just help change America; he helped change
the world."
With
these latest developments, biographies of Martin Luther King, Jr. and histories
of the civil rights movement in America will have to be rewritten, as new
details emerge of MLK's time in Camden clearly indicate that it was a
crossroads, a turning point in his life, and helped instigate the civil rights
movement in America.
The two years
King spent here while attending Crozer Theological Seminary go largely
unrecognized in his biographies, but new evidence is continually being
discovered that something very special happened here, an event that radicalized
King, sparked a fire in his soul, and convinced him to dedicate his ministry to
civil rights.
While
King's studies at Crozier, in Chester, Pa., are documented, his residency in
Camden has previously escaped general recognition until recently, as Patrick
Duff has discovered the story behind the house, one piece at a time. Researching the issue further Duff found other news articles that
indicates that the 1950 complaint was the first time King had taken such legal
action, and the event may have played a more significant role in King's life
than previously believed, and his hunch is being born out.
In Camden
the owner of the house agreed to allow it to be preserved as a museum, and Duff
obtained strong local allies in Father Michael Doyle, whose parish includes the
house, and Rutgers Camden Law School, whose attorneys agreed to do the legal
end and paperwork pro bono. Such a museum and center devoted to King and civil
rights, they all agreed, could lead to the redevelopment of the whole
neighborhood.
After the
state asked for more documentation and the city ordered the house torn down,
Duff remained undeterred, went back to the archives and discovered the
Philadelphia Tribune, the city's venerable black newspaper, had covered the
Maple Shade incident and provided the key elements that could give it
historical designation and certify the time here as a life changing crossroads
for King and some of the others involved.
THE INCIDENT
AT MARY'S PLACE
In June
1950 Crozier seminary student Michael King had yet to become Martin Luther, Jr.
King and was known to friends as Mike or more formally as Michael King. At the
time King and fellow Crozier student Walter McCalll were on summer break from
Crozer and working as interns for Haverford professor Ira Reid, the first
tenured black faculty member at the Philadelphia college. King and McCall knew
the Ivy League sociologist from the Morehouse academy in George. At the time
Reid was conducting seminars on oral history techniques, after which he would
send his students out into the field to interview old Baptist ministers in the
south. Today there is a student center at Haverford named after Reid.
When he
graduated early and with honors from Morehouse and was accepted into Crozer, a
predominately white and well respected school, King’s father gave him a 1948
black Cadillac as a reward. When King first arrived at Crozer, he stayed in a
dorm, where he once berated another black student for drinking beer, as it
reflected on all of the black students. But by his second year, when McCall
showed up from Georgia, King began to occasionally drink beer and shoot pool,
and he moved out of the dorm to live with McCall and his cousins in the back
second floor bedroom of the Walnut street row house in Camden. At that time
Walnut Street in Camden resembled the tree lined streets of Maple Shade today.
It was a
Sunday afternoon when King, McCall and their dates Smith and Wilson, went for a
drive, destination unknown, but late in the day they pulled off the highway
that is now Route 73 and stopped at the roadside cafe known as Mary's Place.
While the
identity of Mary has yet to be determined, the cafe and liquor license were
then being operated by Ernest Nickles, a big, imposing German immigrant.
King and
his companions noticed a few people at the bar, including three college students
and possibly a black guy, and sat down at a table.
After being
ignored for awhile, King got up and approached the bar, asking for service.
Nickles
refused to serve them and when it appeared that King and company were not
leaving until they were served, Nickles went into the back room and emerged
with a gun, saying, "I'd kill for less than this.” He then opened the door
and fired the gun in the air, some say more than once.
That was
enough to get King and his companions to leave, but they went to the police
station where they filed charges against Nickles.
The
police went to the bar, took the weapon from Nickles, apparently got statements
from the customers, including three college students at the bar, and arrested
Nickles on two charges.
THE CASE
IN COURT
At first
King was very upset about the whole incident, and was somewhat embarrassed by
what happened, as he couldn’t tell his father or family that he was kicked out
of a bar and had instigated some legal trouble that would end up in court and
possibly the news.
Instead
of calling home, King and McCall contacted the head of the Burlington County
NAACP, who referred them to Robert Burke Johnson, a lawyer with the NAACP in
Camden. Lloyd Borros, the pastor of Zion Baptist church in Camden also put them
in contact with Dr. Ulysses Wiggins, the head of the local branches of the NAACP.
Like King, Dr. Wiggins was originally from Georgia, and was a respected black
professional who offered them legal assistance. The NAACP attorney, Robert
Burke Johnson, an assistant city prosecutor, represented King and the other complainants
at the preliminary hearing in Maple Shade Municipal Court before Judge Percy
Charlton.
The first
Philadelphia Tribune article uncovered by Duff appears to have been based only
on statements King and McCall gave Dr. Wiggins, but according to the second Tribune
account, Nickles' attorney W. Thomas McCann, of Morristown, explained to the
court that Nickles thought King and company wanted take-out liquor, which he
was unable to sell at that hour on Sunday by law. But as the Tribune article
puts it, he was unable to explain Nickles shooting the gun in the air, although
Nickles did say in a statement that was how he called his dog.
The judge
held Nickles on $500 bail.
Nickles
had a good attorney in McCann, who was respected in the county court, and the Maple
Shade case is mentioned in McCann's obituary among his other accomplishments.
With McCann
defending Nickles and Wiggins, Johnson and the NAACP behind King and company, a
dramatic civil rights court case was shaping up that could have rivaled the
Scopes trial and make them all famous. But then, after the preliminary hearing,
the case was dismissed. Apparently, the parents of the three college student who
were to be witnesses at the trial, put pressure on their kids and the students
declined to testify. So one charge was dismissed and Nickles apparently pleaded
guilty and paid a small fine for the second charge.
Other
than a few newspaper articles, years apart, that mention the Maple Shade
incident, and a passing reference to it in one of King's biographies, Martin
Luther King, Jr.’s short but significant time in Camden went generally
unnoticed. That King lived in Camden even went under the radar of longtime
residents and local historians, one of whom emphatically declared that,
"Martin Luther King never set foot in Camden."
Yet, the
story is now well documented, and aspects of it are still emerging as we learn
more about it.
Nickle's
attorney McCann said that he heatd King testify before Congress on the radio,
and when a Senator asked King what sparked his interest in civil rights, he
recalled the Maple Shade incident, but in those pre-ESPN days, the details are
elusive, as Duff continues to collect the historical documentation necessary to
get state recognition and monetary grants.
The
support of the politicians led to the cleanup of Walnut Street and the clearing
of the adjacent lot. "It looks like a different street," said Duff, looking
a bit bewildered at the sudden change in the street scape as well as his
fortune and the destiny of the house.
While
Maple Shade erects an historic marker and considers an MLK park, Camden begins
to look for funds to restore the house and revive the neighborhood.
After
giving a speech in front of the house on Walnut Street in which he recounted
his first meeting and association with King, Lewis said, "I would love to
come back here someday to visit again, and see a marker, and this place, this
building restored, and it will be a day of jubilation. Don't give up, don't get
lost in a sea of despair. Keep the faith."
And no
one has kept that faith stronger than Patrick Duff. As Norcross said of him,
one person can make a difference, and it doesn’t take education, power or
money, like Duff, you just have to be determined, and be right.
September 19, 2016 Press Conference