Community activist receives Martin Luther King Jr. award

The streets in the Eggerts Crossing neighborhood have been paved, and substandard housing has been replaced by townhouses in the Eggerts Crossing Village affordable housing development.

Children who live in the neighborhood have made significant academic progress because of the help they have received through the Every Child Valued after-school program.

But none of those achievements would have been possible without the vision and leadership of longtime community activist Fred Vereen Jr., who was honored for those efforts by the Every Child Valued program.

Vereen, who is 92, received the Martin Luther King Jr. Award for Service to the Community at a special recognition ceremony on May 13. More than 200 people turned out for the event, which was held in the Lawrence High School cafeteria.

The event also featured keynote speaker Lerone A. Martin, who discussed Martin Luther King Jr.’s childhood and adolescent years as the future civil rights leader struggled to find his footing. Martin is the director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University in California.

Vereen noted that 10.7 million Africans – including his ancestors as well as Martin Luther King Jr.’s ancestors – survived the voyage across the Atlantic Ocean to become slaves in the Americas. They were stowed in dark, filthy and stifling cargo holds.

“We are here tonight because they endured (the trip) and the following years they had to live as slaves,” Vereen said. “So what is our challenge? Don’t be satisfied. We still have to fight to improve our situation.

“There are many people responsible for us gathering in this room, and I stand here representing them. Many of them are gone. You won’t see their names in history books, but they are alive in me. Some day, you will read about them when I complete my book.”

Vereen noted a timeline of how Eggerts Crossing was transformed from a predominantly Black neighborhood filled with substandard housing, pigpens, chicken coops and outhouses in the back yard into one that is diverse and that lately features new homes priced around $500,000 to $600,000.

The timeline begins in 1965 when Lawrence Township officials announced plans to put light industry next to the Eggerts Crossing neighborhood. The Eggerts Crossing Civic League successfully fought it off.

Around the same time, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared the “War on Poverty,” Vereen said. Grants were approved to begin a “Head Start” program for young children and to create the Lawrence Neighborhood Center in the Eggerts Crossing neighborhood.

In 1966, the Eggerts Crossing Civic League petitioned the public school district to include Black history in the curriculum and to hire more Black teachers. The goal was to improve the quality of education for Black children.

Ground was broken for the Eggerts Crossing Village development in 1972, despite much opposition. It welcomed its first tenants in 1974.

In 2000, the Every Child Valued program was launched in the Eggerts Crossing Village community building. The school district became a partner with Every Child Valued, which is now a nonprofit organization.

Vereen said he owes much to his parents, who taught him and his siblings to believe in themselves, in their abilities to achieve and to have faith in the promise of a better tomorrow – despite racism.

“My parents turned heartaches and anger (over discrimination) into religious instruction by preaching to their children that religion is important in life for building a strong foundation of values,” he said.

Vereen wrapped up his remarks by stating that he would accept the Martin Luther King Jr. service award on behalf of his parents, the residents of the Eggerts Crossing neighborhood and the Lawrence Township community.

Lerone A. Martin, the keynote speaker, offered insights into the young Martin Luther King Jr. In his job as the senior editor of the Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project at Stanford University, he began to read King’s letters home to his parents.

“I started reading things about King. I wanted to think about how I would raise a child to be kind, giving and willing to serve the community,” said Martin, who has three young sons.

Reading those letters, Martin said, he learned that the community in which King was raised had given him three things – curiosity, imagination and the opportunity to explore his talents.

One of King’s high school teachers recognized that he was curious. She took him to speech competitions, where he learned about public speaking. The school librarian checked out books for him to take home that he could not do so for himself.

The second gift that the community gave to King was imagination and the ability to see the world beyond the one that he had inherited. He spent one summer in Connecticut working on a farm to earn money for his Morehouse College tuition.

In Connecticut, King could go into a restaurant or movie theater and sit wherever he wanted to sit – unlike Georgia and its Jim Crow laws. He saw a world outside of the racially segregated South.

The third gift was the opportunity to explore his talents. King never aspired to follow in his father’s footsteps to become a minister. He wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer. His grades at Morehouse College were good, but not great.

During his junior year, King took a course titled simply “The Bible.” He earned a grade of “A” in the course – and it turned him around. He changed and became a minister and civil rights leader.

The take-home message?

“We have to lean into every child and value their curiosity,” Martin said. “Use your time wisely to invest in every child. Mentor that child, tutor that child because you never know who is going to become the next young King.”