$229,035 meant to save MLK House goes missing!

Some NJ Officials Lynch The Camden County Legacy Of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
By Linn Washington Jr.
Many across South Jersey see abundant evidence of governmental officials grossly abusing the little known yet historically significant legacy of civil rights luminary Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Camden County.
That legacy includes Dr. King’s first sit-in protest against racial discrimination and King’s first lawsuit against racism.
That King protest and lawsuit occurred in 1950 during a time when King studied at a seminary located in Chester, Pa.
When King protested at a café in Maple Shade, the owner used a gun to force King and three of his friends from the café. That denial of service incident produced King’s first lawsuit against racism.
Earlier this year Camden’s new mayor, Francisco ‘Frank’ Moran, withdrew $229,035 allocated to preserve a Camden property at 753 Walnut Street where Dr. King plotted that Maple Shade sit-in protest against racism.
Moran shifted that $229,035 allocated for the King preservation project to Camden’s Fire Department to buy new equipment.
Even more insulting for some than Moran’s money move are the series of inactions and actions by New Jersey’s Historic Preservation Office (HPO), the entity that places institutions and individuals on the state’s Historic Registry.
In a curious inaction, the HPO has yet to accept or reject an application filed in 2015 for Historic Registry of that Walnut Street property. HPO reviews for Registry placement usually take 90-days or less.
Further, in a truly unprecedented action, the HPO commissioned a $20,000 study to determine the historic validity of King’s presence at that Camden property despite documentation that King plotted the Maple Shade protest there.
The HPO never required a formal study for any of the other 51,000-plus items on NJ’s Historic Registry inclusive of nearly 100 Registry listings in the city of Camden.
NJ researcher Patrick Duff is the person who submitted the application to HPO for Registry placement and Duff led the campaign for the initial allocation of funding for the preservation of the Camden property.
Duff discovered the significance of the Walnut Street, Camden property while researching the 1950 Maple Shade incident. Relatives of King’s seminary colleague and close friend Walter McCall – who was with King during that Maple Shade protest – owned that Walnut Street property. King stayed at the Walnut Street home occasionally.
“African-American history doesn’t seem important to certain people,” Duff said.
Camden Mayor Moran ‘reprogramed’ the federal funds allocated to the King related property because progress on that preservation project was allegedly moving too slowly, a spokesman for the Mayor said.
Moran spokesman Vincent Basara said federal guidelines required either moving the money or returning that funding to the federal government.
Moran is a “strong advocate for preserving the rich history of Camden for future generations,” Basara said, noting the owner of 753 Walnut Street could apply for other funding from the City.
Some observers question Mayor Moran’s professed commitment to highlighting the history of Camden given the fact that in 1950 two prominent Camden residents immediately came to the aid of King – thus bolstering the Camden connection in King’s protest and lawsuit.
Dr. King and his companions received assistance from the then NJ State NAACP head Dr. Ulysses Wiggins and the Camden NAACP branch attorney Robert Burke Johnson. (The Wiggins Waterfront Park in Camden is named about Dr. Wiggins.) A Camden minister and close friend of King alerted Wiggins to King’s plight hours after the Maple Shade incident and Wiggins went to help King in the middle of the night.
Long-time Camden NAACP official Kelly Francis claimed Mayor Moran advanced a bogus rationale for shifting money from the King property preservation project to the Fire Department.
Francis said a housing organization he is involved with had applied for that $229,035, funding that had initially been assigned to another Camden organization to conduct the preservation. Francis said the housing organization he is involved with was fully prepared to quickly begin renovations on the Walnut Street property.
“We applied for that money on January 30th (2018). Moran made the decision to reprogram the money before the required thirty-day review period for our application was even over,” Francis said. “The City could have transferred those funds to us. We were ready to act.”
A document prepared by a Camden City official casts shadows on Moran’s rationale for defunding the preservation project and bolsters the claim by Francis that political shenanigans were a part of the decision to reprogram those federal funds.
That document states federal authorities contacted Camden officials regarding unspent federal funds “on or about February 22, 2018.” Camden officials then made “the determination to reprogram” funds to the Fire Department.
But that document also stated, inexplicably, that on February 19th and 20th the City of Camden published public notices in a local newspaper that “announced the reprograming” of the money from the preservation project to the Fire Department.
Francis and others see shenanigans in the obvious conflict between the claim by Camden officials that their decision to reprogram funds did not occur until after February 22nd yet the City ran a public notice about their intent to reprogram days earlier.
That study commissioned by the HPO is another example of shenanigans critics contend.
NAACP State Conference President Richard T. Smith, in a letter to HPO, strongly criticized the recommendations of that study and the “very formation” of that study conducted by a team of researchers from Stockton University in New Jersey. (That research team did not include any African-Americans, a red flag for researcher Patrick Duff.)
Richard Smith’s letter, on behalf of the NAACP Conference composed of 41 branches in 21 counties, “strongly” urged HPO to reject the study that discounted King’s first lawsuit as virtually insignificant. That lawsuit, the NAACP letter stated, was a salient event in King’s development as a civil rights activist. The NAACP letter characterized events surrounding that lawsuit as “very significant to American and New Jersey history…”
Spokespersons for the HPO rebuff charges of engagement in improper procedures. HPO is awaiting a review of the Stockton study by the King Center in Atlanta.
Lloyd Henderson, head of the Camden County East NAACP branch dismissed the Stockton study as an exercise done “with pre-conceived notions” about what the HPO wanted the study to conclude.
Henderson said, “This whole process is diminishing the history of black folks.”