Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Fight For Civil Rights Started In New Jersey
Happy MLK Day! Martin Luther King, Jr. lived in Camden from 1948 to 1951 when he was a seminarian working in Philadelphia. It was sometime during those years when he first heard of a New Jersey restaurant in Maple Shade (Burlington County) denying service to Black patrons. He rounded up three friends and accosted the owners of Mary’s Café on June 11, 1950. The bartender refused to serve the four Black men, going so far as to get his gun, walk outside, and fire a gunshot into the air in an attempt to intimidate the party from Camden. This dude had no idea who he was fucking with. King and his friends stayed. It would turn out to be a pivotal moment in the great leader’s life and his first attempt at civil disobedience.
King’s New Jersey connection runs even deeper. Fifteen years after the Mary’s Café incident, in 1965, King received an honorary Doctorate of Law from St. Peter’s College in Jersey City. Months later, he gave a historic speech there that he called “The American Dream.” And three years after that, in 1968, he again returned to Jersey City on March 27 to speak at the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in front of 2,000+ about two of his projects. One was his Poor People’s Campaign, a Washington DC march he organized to gain economic justice for those of all races who suffer in poverty.
The second effort of his that he spoke of that day in Jersey City was his involvement in the Memphis Sanitation Strike that labor leaders across the country were helping after the deaths of two sanitation workers—Echol Cole and Robert Walker—were crushed to death from a malfunctioning garbage truck. His efforts resulted in over a thousand sanitation workers receiving higher wages, overtime and increased safety measures.
One week after his 1968 Jersey City Speech, he returned to Memphis and was promptly murdered. His legacy can be celebrated by visiting the Afro-American Historical and Cultural Society Museum in Jersey City (https://www.cityofjerseycity.org/docs/afroam.shtml)
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