HISTORY
New Life for
Forgotten MLK
Site in Camden
;; ;;;; 1950, a young seminary stu-
dent signed his name—M.L. King Jr.—
to a legal complaint, listing his address
as ;;; Walnut Street, Camden.
More than ;; years later, Martin
Luther King Jr.’s Camden residence has
been saved from demolition, thanks in
large part to the e;orts of local car salesman Patrick Du;, an amateur historian
who documented the home’s historic
significance. The two-story, attached
house in one of Camden’s most blighted
neighborhoods was to be razed; instead,
the city has designated the house a
historic site, and a movement is afoot to
restore the structure and turn it into a
civil rights museum and o;ce space for
the local NAACP.
King lived in the house from the end
of ;;;; to ;;;;, while attending Crozer
Theological Seminary in Chester,
Pennsylvania. His Camden residency
had been all but forgotten until Du;,
investigating a related matter, happened upon the legal complaint signed
by King following a June ;;, ;;;;,
incident in nearby Maple Shade.
Du;’s first clue was a newspaper
article describing how King and his
Camden roommate, fellow Crozer
student Walter McCall, and two other
individuals were unceremoniously
tossed out of Mary’s Café, a Maple
Shade bar on what is now Route ;;.
King and his companions went to the
local police station and filed a civil
complaint against the owner of the
bar. It is believed to be the first time
King took legal action in the name of
civil rights. The president of the local
NAACP chapter and an NAACP lawyer
represented King and his companions
in the case, which was dismissed after
the white witnesses who had agreed to
testify failed to show up in court.
Mary’s Café was torn down several
years ago, but through Du;’s e;orts, a
historic plaque is being created for the
site. As for the Walnut Street house,
Du;’s research led him to Jeannette
Hunt, a relative of McCall’s by marriage and the current owner of the now
boarded-up building, once owned by
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