MLK’s deep ties to Philadelphia | Studio 2 from WHYY | 1/19/26

Live from the Ken and Valerie Baker studio at WHYY This is studio 2. On a Monday Welcome, welcome, welcome friends on into the program on this MLK Day of Service I'm Cherry Gregg. And I'm Avi Wolfman Arendt. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Was a son of the South, Atlanta, Georgia to be precise. When he was 19 He graduated college and headed north to Crozer Theological Seminary in Upland It was the beginning of a long relationship between King and the Philadelphia region. King's time here exposed him to new ideas Providing a foundation for his philosophy and for his life's work. In later years He'd returned to put those ideas into action. So today on the show an exploration of Philadelphia's influence on Dr Martin Luther King Jr. Our guide is Lynn Washington an investigative journalist and a professor of journalism at Temple University Lynn has spent years studying and writing about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Lynn, welcome to studio 2. Thank you Thank you for having me here. And so first we wanted to know about your interest in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr I mean you have been studying this man for how long? Before I had gray hair No, actually It was in the probably the early 80s early 80s and as irony would have it My first introduction to King in Philadelphia took place with a street corner conversation about three blocks from here. Oh, really? Yeah, what was that conversation? I'm a very brilliant historian, but not with a PhD a guy named James Spady Saw him on on the street one day and we just got to talking because whenever you saw Spady was going to be a long Conversation so he was talking about this and that and then it was oh and by the way, dr King's first protest was here in the Philadelphia area. Oh, yeah, right And he laid it out and it was actually in Maple Shade, New Jersey Yeah, and that sparked my interest and at the time I was working with the Philadelphia Daily News So, you know every year around this time, you know, what are we gonna do for King? And I said, well, why don't we take a look at? his time in the Philadelphia area and that Started a big plunge into looking at King and you're still plunging today. Ah, yeah It's a pretty deep rabbit hole it goes back to the 1940s Dr. Martin Luther King jr. Before he got his PhD before he was a doctor. He was a 19 year old He was entering the Crozer seminary here in our region. Take us to that time Who was King then and and why did he come here? Well, he came here to go to seminary school. There was a seminary in Chester Pennsylvania, it subsequently moved to Rochester, New York, but he came there he came there with one of his friends from Morehouse named Walter McCall and Wow here Back it up a little bit even before he came here. There was Family connections his father was, you know, very important and well-known Baptist minister and he was tied in with many Baptist ministers here in the city, including the father of What turned out to be a congressman William Gray? a city councilman named Marshall Lorenzo Shepherd and Dr. King was friends with them Well, not them but their children and particularly Marshall Lorenzo Shepherd jr. Who became a minister also Had a church in West Philadelphia. So from time to time in the summer, you know King would come in Then when he got here in the summit in seminary he Went to the University of Pennsylvania took some classes. I even hang out in Camden because his Fellow seminarian Walter McCall their family lived in Camden. So they were, you know, come and hang out partied here Was basically a young man Let me say this because I'm sure this counters the image that the King family wants to put out But the ladies love came and King loved the ladies He's like 19 years old Right. Yeah, was it strange or you know, not strange for him to come to a Baptist seminary in the north? Being that he's from Atlanta and he had gotten his bachelor's at Morehouse Well, I don't know what the motivation that brought him here That was the only one that he accepted him or whatever But he came here and it was really eye-opening for him in a number of ways Prior to him coming here to Philadelphia. It's been a couple of summers in Connecticut where he was working on tobacco farm Wow, could I get a group tobacco in? Connecticut and that was his first time really Interacting in a integrated situation because coming out of Atlanta Very segregated. I mean that was the time of American apartheid and we so conveniently want to forget that past one of the things that struck me as I was doing some research for this conversation was that His time in Philadelphia where was where he was first introduced to the teachings of Gandhi Which became very Critical and significant and him developing his philosophy of non-violence. Can you tell how did he get introduced to that part? well the His actual adoption a formal adoption of the Gandhian principles came when he attended a lecture at a church 20 blocks from here first Unitarian Church on Chestnut Street a Very prominent speaker back in those period a man named Mordecai Johnson. He was the president of Harvard Yeah, the black Harvard is a HBCU and Mr. Johnson was really enamored with Gandhi because they felt that those the Gandhi principles that Type of activism could be effective in breaking down the apartheid in America what doesn't get much attention is that there was a lot of interaction between some black leaders in America and Gandhi himself and in the Gandhi movement So Mordecai Johnson delivered a lecture in November of 1950 at the Unitarian Church King attended it. It was sponsored by an organization called the fellowship Fellowship House and Dr. King in his first autobiography. I think it was called Strive Towards Freedom. He noted how Hearing that Electrified him so much that he went out and bought six books. Yeah On Gandhi and when you read his autobiography He said he was really searching for an effective strategy to utilize to Attack the structural inequities in America. So at that moment at that point in 1950 This is late 1950 King has a sense of I want to do social justice work. I want to dismantle American apartheid he doesn't quite know how he wants to go about that yet But he goes to this lecture in late 1950 in Philadelphia and that's sort of a thunderbolt moment for him well It was a long thunderbolt Okay It lasted a couple of months because we have to remember that Attending that lecture was after he actually staged his first formal protest which took place in June June 11 1950 and and that and talk about that because he that was his first real I guess Clash with act of discrimination. It took place in Mapleshade, New Jersey. You sort of talked about this He and his friend went to Mary's Cafe. Tell us the story well the Story that is incredibly the story that's in all of the history books and again incredibly King's time in Philadelphia both during the seminary and subsequent to that takes up just a few lines and all of these biographies on him including Pulitzer Prize-winning biographies King when he was with McCall I've worked with a guy named Patrick Duff And he's done a lot of research on this and done a lot of good work and it looks like in early 1950 King and McCall tried to desegregate a Bowling alley in Philadelphia. I mean in Camden. Hmm. That didn't go too well. So what do we know about that? very little Patrick in interviewing people who knew King at the time who were residents in the house at McCall stayed in his relatives They just blurted that out one day. I was like what but as it turned out the Segregation of bowling was a real flashpoint in the early civil Well, not the early but the ongoing civil rights movement. So let's go to Mapleshade King decided that he needed to do something to address this discrimination He knew that there was problems with discrimination, he knew that Mapleshade was to The Klan used to parade through Mapleshade so he decided that he was going to go to this cafe Barry's cafe and See what he could do in terms of desegregation So it was King McCall McCall's date at the time a woman named Pearl Smith and in her roommate a woman named Doris Wilson they go there they asked to get some beers on a Sunday night and the bar owner restaurant owner a guy named Nichols They knew they were going to be rejected was that part of they probably thought so because The family the relatives of McCall they had a conversation That night before they went up there at camp in Camden at their house at 753 Walnut Street And they were trying to dissuade King from going up there because they said it's not gonna be nothing but trouble And he says we got to get this thing straightened out. We're going up there. Hmm, and that's when he went up there and They were denied service at one point They couldn't get the beer. They said well, can we get some? Ginger ale And the bar owner says no, you know get out of here and the bar owner thought that They were trying to set him up in some kind of way. So he goes and gets a gun And you know said, you know, I killed for less and he shoots the gun outdoors They left they immediately go to the Mapleshade police station and reporting and that led to King's first lawsuit against discrimination King knew that New Jersey was the first state in the union that actually passed a law that barred discrimination in public accommodations and they used that law and It's really a fascinating story when we look at all that was going on in Jersey at the time that night when he was At the police station the head of Camden County's NAACP a man named dr Ulysses Wiggins from Camden actually went to Mapleshade and Straightened things out. The lawsuit was filed by an associate of Wiggins a guy named Burke Johnson Who was a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania's law school Wow and Burke Johnson? Actually, he when he was at the law school, he was the head of the law review there and there was a then a young black woman who wanted to go on to the law review the Dean didn't want to have it. No women and particularly no colored girl and that color girl turned out to be Sadie Alexander Yeah, and of course a school named after her school named after her right next to That's just the beginning of that loop so 1950 is a big year Oh, it's a it's a year sounds like a year of awakening for him, right? He has this action in Mapleshade, New Jersey He goes to this lecture in Philadelphia and you see this convergence coming between I'm gonna do something about racial injustice In America, and I'm gonna use non-violence as my primary tool I mean, it sounds like 1950 that a lot is happening in the mind of a young. Dr. Year because of that this kind of that incident in Mapleshade and it didn't quite work out too well because The lawsuit didn't go as far as King wanted it to go. So he saw that there were some Let's say difficulties with using that and that's in part why he went to hear the lecture because he you know, he was searching trying to get some more information and when he heard Gandhi's principles It's not that he wasn't unaware of Gandhi's principle because he had studied Gandhi and studied other people he studied communism started Marxism And he thought that Gandhi had the best approach and that's how he started adopting that and as it turned out years later King actually went to India for four weeks and it was sponsored by the Quaker organization here in Philadelphia American Friends Service American Friends Service Committee and it was a Man and his wife from Philadelphia a Jim Bristol who actually took him around While he was in India, and it's so interesting because he wrote an article in 1958 called my pilgrimage to non-violence and he specifically refers to his years in the greater Philadelphia area as You know as a time when he began a serious Intellectual quest for a method to eliminate social evil. So this was a really formative time for him, right? Right. So what happened in maple shade or more specifically what didn't happen? Led to him trying to think a little bit deeper on how to get something. Yeah lawsuits aren't gonna cut it I need some other method and then sort of Gandhi comes on his horizon. Well, we're gonna talk a lot more about the formation of Dr. Martin Luther King jr. Here in our region and then on the other side of this break We're also going to talk Lynn about how he starts to put some of those principles into action in later years Including in some pretty big cases you might remember set right here in Philadelphia. We're talking with Lynn Washington about about the Philadelphia years in the Philadelphia roots of dr. Martin Luther King jr Lynn is an investigative journalist and professor of journalism at Temple University. Don't go anywhere. You're listening to studio 2 on whyy And Welcome back to studio 2 on whyy. I'm Avi Wolfman and I'm Cherry Greg this hour We've been talking about the connection between dr. Martin Luther King jr And the place that we all call home Philadelphia with us in studio is Lynn Washington Investigative journalist and a professor of journalism at Temple University Lynn so happy to have you this hour It's good to be able to talk about this story because it just gets short shrift again in all these masses in multiple biographies on King Library University of Delaware library in the summer And it was almost scary because nobody was in. Yeah, I'm looking through all these books and I'm trying to find cuz somebody's gonna have this Story and nobody had this story. Yeah, and by the way the story you're talking about Before the break we were talking about how dr. Martin Luther King jr Came to Philadelphia region as a 19 year old to go to seminary He spent time in Camden, New Jersey and this is the place where he was really started putting two and two together exposed to the teachings of Gandhi and actually filed his first civil rights lawsuit after trying to integrate a place or tried to Spark do non-violent protests at Mary's Cafe in Camden and so we're we're in the 1950s at this point with dr. King and I wanted people to kind of understand what was going on in Philadelphia at that time because Philadelphia had prominent black families as well. There was a burgeoning civil rights movement here as well And then kind of talk about how what was happening here may have influenced King as well because he had a lot of relationships with folks Who were already here very well connected in the city. Well, there's an account in some of the biographies on King where he was in Philadelphia in Center City for the Philadelphia having a meal with one of his friends not McCall and The food came out slowly. They complained about it when the food came back. It had sand in it and But there wasn't any legal mechanism that he could use because Pennsylvania didn't have a law like, New Jersey had And that law that New Jersey initially passed in 1945 was introduced by the second Negro to sit in New Jersey's legislature so King had some experiences here before he started, you know moving on To Camden and Mapleshade Other places and that incident in Mapleshade was very important to him So much so that he asked his mother to postpone his brother's wedding so he could attend a court proceeding So for those who want to say, oh, this is just a blip. It wasn't any big deal Well, if it wasn't such a big deal then he would have been in Atlanta at the wedding versus up here and The family Relented postponed the wedding and King and his sister trying to get back there in time for the reschedule. He actually got a speeding ticket Delaware or in Maryland, you know trying to get back down south to attend the postponed wedding when King came to Crozier to get his Bachelor of Divinity Was it known to him? Was it known to his family that this was part of a path that he was building? Toward a social justice movement or some sort of life in a social justice movement Or was that still a developing idea for him and his family? I'm just imagining, you know, his dad his mom sending him up here to Chester Are they thinking look he's just gonna go to Divinity School or is are they thinking he's also there in Part because of the social justice work he wants to do. I would say that When he came here The expectation of his parents and I guess initially him was that he would just be a good minister. Yeah Yeah, he was gonna follow find a block father's footsteps now in Chester There was a minister named Pius Barber who was the he was the first Negro to graduate from The Crozier seminary and he would take people under his wing who went there and he all Reverend Barber also knew King and his family. So he took King under his wing And as it turned out Reverend Barber was Very he was an activist Police brutality housing discrimination also, he was challenging all of that. So there was a lot of very vigorous conversations between King and Reverend Barber Over some good meals that the Barber's wife would cook So this seemed like this was a very formative These were very formative years That King spent in the Philadelphia region really learning how to become an activist really cutting his teeth at nonviolent protests really solidifying some of the philosophies that he was taking on and That relationship sort of continued because he developed relationships. I know he was good friends with Bill Gray He would come back And preach at Bright Hope Baptist Church What did those visits back and forth to Philadelphia look like once he sort of like started executing on this vision that he had developed Well those who knew him people like the late C. Dolores Tucker She said that the Philadelphia was like a second home to King he came here as a part of his movement and Trying to expand the movement when he Near the latter year of his life when he put together the poor people's campaign That was going to have an event a long-standing event down in Washington, DC the first office that In the north was in North Philadelphia C. Dolores Tucker donated some space in one of the buildings that she owned He would come here and get donations Yeah, yeah He was in and out of the city quite a bit, but it was became the Protests at Girard College. Yeah, we should probably take a pause there a pause there. That's a big one So let's take folks back to the mid 1960s kind of cresting in 1965 What's going on at Girard College? So Girard College for folks that don't know Is a school established in the 19th century by Stephen Girard a very wealthy financier for explicitly white Orphan boys, correct It's located in North Philadelphia and in the mid 1960s There is a movement to desegregate it right it take us inside that movement and why it was So significant here in Philadelphia. Well, we look at Philadelphia as being this Quaker inspired genteel city Reality racism was like you can soak thick you can cut it with a knife There was a lot of support for the Confederacy here in Philadelphia Where we are right now today back in 1830s, there was a place called Pennsylvania Hall that Abolitionists built and within days of the building opening abolition anti abolitionists Burn the place to the ground And as so often happens in racist incidents The account said that the mob that burned the building was made up of gentlemen of standing and wealth But when the grand jury got involved in it, nobody knew anybody So Philadelphia was a very racist place and it didn't end in the 19th century it went into the 20th century the effort to desegregate Girard College from my understanding actually began back in the 50s. There were legal actions Sadie Alexander's husband Raymond Pace Alexander was trying to do some things in terms of court trying to take some action and it was complicated because he had in his Will or he had bequeathed The Girard College was by the way for folks don't understand. It's not a it's not a bachelor's college. It's you know, it's for secondary school But it was difficult in part because Girard had wanted it to be right for white boys, right, right yeah, and the Entity that actually oversaw it and I think still to today Was a collection of judges Philadelphia, right? So there was a lot of legal entanglements and when the legal action when the court action was just moving too slowly a Gentleman named Cecil B Moore gets involved. Yeah, and that's when you started having direct action and King came in for that but Cecil and let's talk about Cecil B Moore because Cecil B Moore famed lawyer here also the head of the NAACP at the time Had a different sort of philosophy than King who was very nonviolent He's a little bit more militant and he wasn't necessarily very welcoming to King at the time Can you talk about their relationship about Cecil B Moore who he was and the differences between him and King at this time? There was Let's just say a difference in approach. Like you said Cecil was a little more militant than King a little more rooted in direct action Not turn the other cheek But also there was a little ego there, too Cuz he was the big civil right. He was the big civil right. This is my city and this carpetbagger He called King a carpetbagger is not gonna come into the city and there was one time when he King came in And it was announced Martin Luther King's gonna come here Oh, no, he's not and he's not gonna do this and they finally relented work things out And within 24 hour notice it came up. Well King's gonna be in West Philadelphia. He's gonna be in North Philadelphia He's gonna be here when he was in West Philadelphia at 40th and Haverford Lancaster where they all come together 10,000 people showed up in North Philadelphia. I think about 5,000 people showed up and he was at the wall Because Gerard College is a wall around it and part of Cecil's Cecil Moore's Demonstrations, they would have people march around the wall and there was a police commissioner in Philadelphia at the time named Frank Rizzo yeah, who you know could have been a Descendant of Bull Connor from down south and when the people be marching peacefully, you know, but vigorously Rizzo would have motorcycle cops drive their motorcycles down the street knocking people over So there was a lot of tension there but they had a So we say a rocky relationship, but it ultimately broke down to they both saw the need to try to work together Because the overall goal was much bigger than their respective Perceptions I want to read this quote from King you mentioned that wall There is like if you go there in North Philadelphia, there's a literal wall around Gerard College still is today Yeah and King said it is a sad experience at this stage of the 20th century to have to stand in the city that has been Known as the cradle of Liberty that has in its midst and in its presence a kind of Berlin wall To keep the colored children of God out Why was it important enough for King? To come here and to speak on this issue given that so much of his work was in the south Is he starting to turn his gaze northward by 1965? Well by 65, he's definitely turned his gaze northward No, when he goes into Chicago, you know, he gets hit with a brick, you know in one of the near end suburbs in Chicago and he saw that the Inequities and discrimination in the north were much more entrenched than in the south You know down south. I mean the biggest races in town could be your great good buddy, you know Slap you on the back, but you had to follow a line in the north They would um, you know smile you in the face and stab you in the back. So he by the mid 60s he was trying to expand the issue of civil rights and this was a very clear and dramatic when Well, we had this institution right in the middle of a largely then black neighborhood. It's all gentrified Yeah, well not all but almost all and He just incorporated that in there. Plus he had people in Philadelphia. Hey, you need to come here. We need you to help Elevate so he's trying to make this case not just to Philadelphia But to the country and that's that the work that you've been seeing me do in the south these many years That's not the only work to be done, right? Absolutely. Yeah, and and I wonder because we we talked about 1965 and the Girard College Desegregation effort but Philadelphia people from here were big supporters of King And I read that in night when there was the March on Washington the largest contingency of folks came from Philadelphia yeah, and and how big of a support light as far as fundraising like how big of a you know an impact if Philadelphia residents the leaders here the Institutions here because Philadelphia has this long history as far as African Americans being free people and having power in Institutions how big of a deal were were those? Institutions to King and his efforts. Well, they would help Fund him they would give him, you know moral support. I'm sure there was some technical assistance because you know collective minds being together, but he was Really dedicated to efforts to try to change the system if we can flip back to like 1950 Reverend Pius Barber's daughter a woman named Elman Ina Barber She became the second black female lawyer in Pennsylvania. She succeeded after Sadie Alexander Sadie Alexander Elman Ida's Son was very sick and long story short. She got beat up by police in Chester and they took the police officer to court and Reverend Barber Organized a whole bunch of folks. They came there. One of the persons that came to provide moral support for Elman Ida Barber was a young seminarian named Mike King He was my king before he was Martin Luther Mike Mike And I mean, there's newspaper articles on this is not, you know people talking So this was a long effort for him. So Philadelphia really, you know helped out had this mutual relation. Yeah Can you talk about Philadelphia and his activism? I mean it really goes back to the founding of the country The first petition sent to Congress asking for a gradual Elimination of slavery came from black Philadelphians in 1799 They also were requesting an end to the practice of kidnapping free blacks and taking them back into slavery And remember at that time Philadelphia was the nation's capital. So Congress was meeting over at What was then the Statehouse? The building right there on Chestnut Street between 56th Street and that petition just got thrown out When you read the congressional record There was one Congress person from South Carolina and said, you know, thank God for slavery. Well, you expect that from South Carolina, but there was a congressman from Rhode Island Who said we should disapprove of this? Insulting petition because we all know that Negroes can't write But the petition was written by Absalom Jones a black minister What's the duality of Philadelphia that you have both this long history of activism and striving but then also this entrenched racism that you described I'm curious what you think If you had to guess King made of that when he was living here as a young person I mean, this is his first prolonged period of time living in a somewhat integrated Society Crozier was integrated, correct? I mean, he's going to an integrated school, correct? So I'm just curious If he took any lessons or or any any inspiration or any perhaps Pessimism away from living in a somewhat integrated world for the first time Well, the answer would be yes. I mean, you know, he's had that kind of experience in in Connecticut Connecticut Where where he was Immediately there was like a kumbaya, but you walk off the farm away from that, you know the seminary Harmony, but you walk into downtown Chester You're a Negro and you were discriminated against and it's you know Very clear and evident that there are boundaries based on race segregation and again this America was in apartheid And we always like to forget all these things but both the Nazis and The architect will not the architects with the people who implemented Apartheid in South Africa, they justified what they did based on what was going on in America So interesting when I think about all that King learned here As a young man sort of putting things together how he came back here Do you think that there were things that he Couldn't have learned anywhere else had he not been in Philadelphia, I would say yes, I can't give you a chapter and verse on it, but the experience Was unique in that there is this persona of this perception of Philadelphia being very genteel Being very progressive the home of democracy and then when people get here and it just smacks you in the face So What do you think it is and what it really is I'm sure that had an impact on it because it seems like he got some of that grit During his formative years here like having done his first nonviolent action in Camden and then sort of getting introduced to Gandhi's Teachings and really taking that all in and then being mentored by Reverend Barber yeah, and Also, I mean he's studying at University of Pennsylvania, he's interacting with a whole lot of people That has an impact on we look at King and when we think of King doing something other than civil rights we look at him The action that he told against the Vietnam War what 67 However in 1958 King is in Cape May, New Jersey Speaking at a Quaker convention and he's equating American segregation with colonialism in Africa and in Asia in 1962 King Issues a call to boycott South Africa because of its apartheid And he did that in conjunction with the then head of the ANC a man named Albert Latour You know, this is before Nelson Mandela became the president Nelson Mandela at that point was on the run because he was a member of the ANC's military wing So King did a lot of things in terms of Equating what's going on overseas with what's happening here and a lot of that connects right to our yeah right here So it was the you know Quakers and other people progressive people in in the Philadelphia region and in Philadelphia was schooling him on you mentioned 1967 and King does come back to Philadelphia in October of 1967 as part of the Southern Christian leadership freedom tour plays this big Event at the Spectrum, I think that Sidney Poitier is there Aretha Franklin Nipsey Russell That's a long way from being Mike King in Chester in 1949 1950, you know at this point 1967 I mean he is a he is of course a civil rights leader But also as you can kind of get a sense there a celebrity right? I mean playing his show at the Spectrum I'm curious at that point in time, you know Where King is in terms of his his activism like 67 68 How far has his philosophy progressed from you know, the philosophy he embraced back in 49 50 living here, I think when you get to the 67 68 period he's starting to see a lot of disillusionment. Yeah He felt that that ---- the change that he'd been fighting for since the mid 50s In a big way should have had more impact. Yes. There was the civil rights law Yes, there was the voting rights law, but still there was an entrenchment and particularly when he started coming, you know further north So I think that was around the time when he was talking about Would he raise the issue about? Integrating into a burning house. Yes. Yes Is there some value in that? Well, I will note that when he comes in 67 He also gives a speech a side speech at Barrett junior high school, right? It's not Philadelphia and he says part of that speech. Our slogan must not be burn baby burn It must be build baby build organized baby organized. Our slogan must be learn baby learn so we can earn Yeah, well he went from civil rights to silver rights economics The part of the I have a dream speech and everybody always forget Yeah before we get to the dream he talks about the nightmare and part of that nightmare was the economic inequities and by 67 he's thinking about the The poor people's campaign and when he's talking about poor people, he's not just talking about poor people in Harlem He's talking about poor people in the hollows of West Virginia. Also. Yeah, and as we wrap up February of 1968 was a King's last trip to Philadelphia and he was treated by dr. Walter Lomax He had laryngitis and of course Walter Lomax was a very prominent Philadelphia physician African American and then King died Just a few months later. It was later. Yeah What's really interesting about New Jersey? Dr. King did his first protest in New Jersey in the last speech that he gave in the north Four days before he was assassinated was in Patterson, New Jersey and that's what's kind of mind-boggling because Patrick Duff that I mentioned earlier has been trying to get a New Jersey State historic recognition of the house that King was in when he planned to go up to Maple Shade and New Jersey State historic people Resistant to that and they've also resisted doing anything about Memorializing the actual protest site in Maple Shade. There is a marker there But it was a marker that Patrick Duff was responsible for putting up Well, I'm glad you mentioned that because we're gonna talk to Patrick on the other side of this break But first we have to thank you Lynn Washington investigative journalist and a professor of journalism at Temple University Lynn, thank you so much for your time this hour Thank you so much and appreciate your interest in the topic and appreciate you having me here Of course, and when we come back from this next break, we'll hear about the MLK house in Camden, New Jersey Right across the river from where we are right now We'll discuss the significance of that building and the many efforts to preserve it stick with us We'll be right back on this King holiday And Welcome back to studio 2 here on whyy. I'm Cherry Greg and I'm Avi Wolfman errant earlier this hour We talked a lot about dr. Martin Luther King jr. And the time he spent in our region while attending Crozer Theological Seminary Dr. King spent a lot of his time in Camden, New Jersey. He took residence there from 1948 until 1951 and over the decades the house he lived in located at 753 Walnut Street became dilapidated due to neglect there were fell development deals even vandalism and in 2024 the house earned an infamous spot on preservation, New Jersey's most endangered sites list our next guest has worked alongside other community leaders and activists to preserve the MLK house in Camden as well as the history it represents Patrick Duff welcome to studio 2 No, thank you for having me. And so Patrick you've been an activist for many years But you've been specifically advocating for the MLK house in Camden What really hooked your interest and made you say, you know what? I'm gonna advocate for this cause well I've been an activist in the cannabis community in Los Angeles for really 10 years from the 2005 2015 there was a lot of techniques and tactics I used and that activism that I Took from dr. King a lot of the protests by the peaceful protests nonviolent activism Almost sit-in type things where when the DEA would come would refuse to leave and So when I moved back to the Philadelphia area, which is around 2014 I had come across a story that showed that dr. King's activism started in Mapleshade and I thought it was kind of odd, but I didn't know that being I grew up two towns away and When I started to research it more I realized that it was actually true That dr. King was refused service in Mapleshade on June 12th of 1950 So I made it a point to go to Mapleshade's Committee and council and requested that they memorialize in some way I remember having a meeting with the solicitor and the one of the council people and They gave me a challenge. They said if you want a marker here, you're gonna have to prove it happened in Mapleshade and the dr. King with a primary source document and At that time was October of 2014 and it took me two and a half months on January 15th on King's birthday On 2015 I found the police report in an archive that showed Martin Luther King was in fact in Mapleshade was in fact part of a Group of defendants and also it had his address on it, which was 753 Walnut Street and In Camden, New Jersey, and when I saw that I wait Martin Luther King in Camden. This is something that I surely had never heard of and so I Went down to the house Saul was abandoned had a demolition sign on the house from Hargrove demolition and found out who owned the home a woman named Jeanette Lily hunt on the home and I went to her house knocked on her door and I went there with Kelly Francis who was the ex-NAA superior and I asked her I said very simply I said and can I ask Did you know dr. Martin Luther King and she said well He used to live in my house Just like that one rabbit hole leads to another so let's rewind a little bit How did dr. King come to live in this house because presumably he's spending some of his time at seminary in Chester, but he's also splitting his time. I guess living in Camden as well. So why is he even living in him? So his best friend was a man named Walter McCall and Paul actually met in Morehouse McCall was giving my haircut for 10 cents King didn't have the 10 cents in his pocket and not many people know that King was sent to college with a checkbook So he didn't have a lot of cash for them and them to round up into a wrestling match over the 10 cents and became best friends after that Walter McCall's cousin lived in uncle lived in Camden Jethro hunt Mr. Hunt allowed McCall and King to stay there periodically McCall had to stay there first because he didn't he wasn't able to go to College and until semester after he actually worked in Camden school district for a semester set to save money so he can go to Crozier with King and then join King the second semester And a lot of people don't realize this at that time civil rights in the country Were absolutely I mean it was people were coming back from the war and the military had desegregated so One of the people that had come back from the war was Jethro hunt was I Apologize was a Walter McCall's cousin and they were having a conversation on the stairs outside of 753 Walnut Street where McCall had just let him know and King and just let him know that they're ready to go get some sandwiches and maple shade and Jethro said absolutely not you're not going to go there. They don't serve black people. You can't go down there and King on the steps of 753 Walnut Street. This is from Jethro hunt said that He said oh, that's okay. Maybe you think we shouldn't be going there, but maybe we need to go down there So we can start going anywhere that we want and You know from there they you know people think that it was some sort of happenstance that they went in there purposefully To because they knew they weren't going to be served It was purposeful because New Jersey had a civil rights legislation that had been passed What's interesting is the pass in 1945 by? Hill they called the Hill bill. He was one of the only African American assemblyman in New Jersey second African American assemblyman It was then ratified in 1947 in the New Jersey Constitution, but it didn't have an enforcement mechanism. It wasn't till 1949 when a woman Freeman from Essex County actually gave it an enforcement mechanism So in January of 1950 was really be the law was able to be used and one of the first people to use New Jersey's law Not serving people in places of public accommodation Was Martin Luther King jr. And New Jersey's Department of Environmental Protection And historic preservation office say that that is not a significant event in history or in the life of dr King the first civil rights battle of Martin Luther King Wow Wow, and and I want to we only have a couple minutes left But I do want to sort of talk further about this because this house fell into Dilapidation it was vandalized falling down and there was this launch of an effort to save the house and to preserve it Can you tell us where the house currently stands? What's the situation right now? Well in 2023 the house caught fire and It burned it down almost completely except for the front and the side wall that stood Pastor Amir Khan who I had Who had basically taken possession of the house in 2021. I think it was Has then has now since rebuilt the house It is almost complete so Tech it's going to be used on I believe as a place for kids to come like a museum and a learning center for children and they're going to be building a another building next to it as like a museum for the for the I Guess for the area to learn about it What's sad is that New Jersey has not embraced this event? and I believe the reason why they haven't is because they don't want to be known for the The place that started the civil rights career of Martin Luther King when most people think it's Montgomery But the fact is it was New Jersey civil rights law that King later Asked the federal government to enact that gave us the federal legislation that was passed in 1963 So if it weren't for Kings involvement in maple shade and what happened, New Jersey Who knows if we ever have? Dr. King in the latter years well Obviously, we wish you and Mr. Khan the best in bringing this dream to a reality and we look forward to hopefully someday to visiting it ourselves Thank you so much. And if you yeah, if you want to visit somewhere That's amazing that that just came out last year you're for the first Unitarian Church That's at 21st and chestnut is actually the place that he heard. Dr. King's or I'm sorry Mordecai Johnson speech Yeah, yeah, there's so many great we have to end it there Patrick Duff activist Who has been critical in trying to preserve? Dr. King's former home in Camden, but there are so many great historical sites all around the region with links to dr. King Thank you Patrick for your time today. Thank you. Yeah, and that address again 753 Walnut Street in Camden, New Jersey got to say thank you to our producers Debbie builder Andreas Copes and hazel may Brian for their help putting it together today's show Thanks to our visual producer Mike Schiffler our banks to Tina Callicutt engineer today's show Our executive producer is Kevin McCrory from studio 2 here at whyy in Philadelphia on King Day I'm cherry bread, and I'm Avi Wolfman errands. We will talk to you tomorrow and Tomorrow at noon we will be back with another hour of studio 2 and we want to make sure that you do not miss any Of our episodes, so please be sure to follow whyy YouTube channel or Facebook page where we go live Monday through Thursday at And if you can't make it at noon, we've got you covered find us wherever you get your podcast or check Whyy's YouTube channel. Thanks for watching or listening coming up next It's here and now