User:Djflem/753 Walnut Street, Camden

753 Walnut Street is a house in Camden, New Jersey, where Martin Luther King Jr. lived from 1949 to 1951. King resided with the Hunt family while a student at Crozer Theological Seminary, across the Delaware River in Philadelphia. There are attempts to have the delapidated building preserved as memorial to King and the African-American civil rights movement. The building is a city landmark, but is not listed on the state and federal registers of historic places.

Maple Shade incident

M. L. King Jr., who was then 21 years old, was involved in an incident in at a tavern in Maple Shade involving a tavern owner, Ernest Nichols.

The homeowner, Benjamin Hunt, and Ulysses Wiggins, the president of the Camden County branch of the N.A.A.C.P., helped the students file a police complaint. The complaint was against Ernest Nichols, a white tavern owner and said that he had refused to serve the black students and their dates in June 1950, and had threatened them by firing a gun in the air. The complaint was signed by the two students. One of the signatures, in a loopy, slanted cursive, reads “M. L. King Jr.”

Status

The home in South Camden has been empty for decades and is in disrepair. In recent years, Mrs. Hunt has been helping activists who are trying to have the property placed on the National Register of Historic Places. While the house has been designated as a historic site by the City of Camden, the State of New Jersey must review the application before it can move to the federal level.