Fire rips through the Camden house where Martin Luther King Jr. once stayed

A crumbling Camden rowhouse where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. sometimes stayed in the early 1950s when he was a graduate seminary student, subject of a years-long historic preservation effort, sustained heavy damage in an early-morning fire Saturday.

The blaze at the boarded-up three-story home at 735 Walnut St. was reported just after 2:30 a.m., Camden Fire Department officials said. Arriving crews saw heavy flames pouring from the rear of the second floor, and part of the roof later collapsed.

Four residents had to evacuate when flames spread to the house next door. No injuries were reported.

“From the ashes will rise the Phoenix,” said Patrick Duff, of Haddon Heights, an activist and amateur historian who researched King’s ties to the Camden rowhouse and applied to have New Jersey recognize it as a historic site. The state Historic Preservation Office ruled it ineligible in 2020, saying King had not been a legal resident in the home.

» READ MORE: Crozer was an early influence on Dr. King

Duff said he drove to the scene early Saturday as soon as he heard about the fire. “It’s been a long battle,” he said. “I felt like crap this morning, defeated. But now I think this isn’t going to end here.”

He noted that the house’s facade and side walls were still standing. It has been vacant for decades.

The cause of the fire is under investigation, Camden fire officials said Saturday afternoon. It was not clear whether the structure would be condemned and demolished.

King and a classmate stayed at the home while attending the now-closed Crozer Theological Seminary in Upland, Delaware County, from fall 1948 to spring 1951, according to Duff’s research. King lived mostly on the seminary’s campus but often stayed in Camden on weekends, during school breaks and over the summer.

» READ MORE: Dr. King's confrontation with a Maple Shade bartender

The late Rep. John Lewis (D., Ga.), a hero of the Selma voting-rights march who was severely beaten by Alabama state troopers, visited the deteriorating house in 2016 and called it a “piece of historic real estate that must be saved for generations yet unborn.”

King’s time in Camden had a significant impact on his life, Duff argued, in part because that’s where he was living when he and a few friends remained seated when they were refused service at a bar in Maple Shade in June 1950 — just over a month after Crozer let out for the summer. It was his first sit-in, Duff said. The pub owner walked outside and fired a pistol in the air. He was arrested, but the prosecution was later dropped.

Recently, Duff proved that King, while a seminary student, first heard Howard University president and activist Mordecai Johnson give a lecture about Mohandas Gandhi’s principles at the First Unitarian Church in Center City. King wrote the talk led him to adopt nonviolence in the civil rights movement — but for decades, biographers and historians had misidentified the venue for the event.