MLK’s Civil Rights Journey Began In South Jersey. A New Museum Is Set To Tell The Story
When Martin Luther King Jr. attended the now-defunct Crozer Theological Seminary near Chester, Pennsylvania, between 1948 and 1951, he didn’t feel particularly comfortable living at the mostly white school.
That's why the reverend-in-training spent summers and weekends at his best friend’s uncle’s house in the Bergen Square section of Camden, New Jersey.
And it was there, across the Delaware River from Philadelphia where a new museum is taking shape, that the budding activist kicked off one of his earliest and most formative civil rights demonstrations.

The dilapidated row home at 753 Walnut St. has seen better days, especially after a fire ripped through it in 2023.
But South Jersey nonprofit New Beginnings is doubling down on its work to restore the historic structure, honor King's legacy as a civil rights leader, and spur a wave of redevelopment in an area that could sorely use it.
“If this was a normal house, we would just knock it down,” said New Beginnings founder Amir Khan, a Camden native who is working to turn the home the organization acquired in 2021 into a museum celebrating King’s life and the civil rights movement.
The 2023 fire ended up being a blessing in disguise, as the nonprofit received a $150K insurance payout and several offers for free construction work, Khan said.
The boost allowed it to start renovating the old row home, which will eventually look as it did when King stayed there. Khan even managed to recover a chair the reverend sat in from an alley nearby. That project should be done by the end of 2026, he said.
New Beginnings also owns the vacant lot next door, where it plans to build a larger, more modern space with exhibits about King and the Civil Rights Movement at large.
“That’s going to be a ‘please touch’ museum,” Khan said. “There will be a section that ties directly into Camden.”
Khan isn’t sure when the exhibit space will be complete. The work will cost roughly $450K, and the nonprofit doesn’t have all the funding it needs lined up yet, he said.
Bergen Square and the rest of Camden have struggled mightily since white flight depleted the city’s tax base starting in the 1960s. But Khan said starting work on the museum has already led to a small wave of revitalization on that block of Walnut Street.
A developer bought and renovated the house next door, and similar work is underway at a residence across the street.
“You’re hoping that this thing spreads like wildfire,” Khan said. “[That] property values will go up in that area.”

Khan said that is what happened in the neighborhood around King’s birth home in Atlanta, which sits near popular attractions like the Krog Street Market and BeltLine multi-use path.
The Atlanta structure where the civil rights icon was born in 1929 made it on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974, and it became the center of a new national park in 1980. The complex includes the I Have a Dream World Peace Rose Garden and the tomb where King and his wife are buried.
Khan isn’t sure how many people will come to the Camden museum, but he hopes it will follow the trail blazed by the Atlanta site, which gets more than 1 million visitors every year, according to the Trust for Public Land.
MLK’s South Jersey Awakening
King graduated from Morehouse College at age 19 in 1948. While studying there, he became close friends with Walter McCall, whose uncle, Jesthroe Hunt Sr., owned and lived in the home on Walnut Street.
Hunt was a well-connected member of Camden’s African American community and eventually became one of the city’s first Black firefighters in September 1950.
In June 1950, 21-year-old King, McCall and two other friends wanted to get something to eat after church, according to historic records. The group landed on Mary’s Cafe, a restaurant about 10 miles east of Camden in Maple Shade.
Hunt caught wind of the plan and thought it was a bad idea.
“Don’t you dare go down there,” he told King, according to Khan’s recollection of the story. “Coloreds aren’t allowed to be there.”
But that didn’t stop the reverend-in-training, who wanted to test out a statewide antidiscrimination law passed the year prior. The New Jersey Civil Rights Act, also known as the Freeman Bill, prohibited discrimination by race when it came to public accommodation in restaurants, hotels and dance halls.

King and his friends drove over to Mary’s and sat down at a table, but they were never served. After waiting for a few minutes, King and McCall went up to the counter and made contact with owner Ernest Nichols, who was not happy to see them.
The conversation ended with Nichols firing his gun, prompting King and his friends to leave.
When they got back to Camden, King and McCall told Hunt what happened. The soon-to-be fireman spoke to neighbor Ulysses Simpson Wiggins, leader of the Camden County branch of the NAACP.
King, Hunt and Wiggins traveled to Maple Shade the following day and filed a police report against Nichols, who was eventually charged with and convicted of violating the antidiscrimination law.
The restaurateur never spent any time behind bars for his conduct, Khan said.
The Mary's incident wasn't the only formative lesson in protest King had in the Philly area. He first learned about Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi’s nonviolent civil disobedience tactics during a lecture held at Center City’s First Unitarian Church in November 1950, according to historical accounts.
Gandhi's techniques were a key pillar of the strategy King used to enact legislative change across the country in the decades that followed.
Yet the unsettling restaurant encounter might have been the spark that ignited King's lifelong work. Years later, King was asked what set him down the path of outspoken activism that ultimately led to his murder.
“He referenced this case,” Khan said. “It was the first time he ever used the law and civil disobedience.”