Inside Philadelphia church that inspired MLK Jr.'s approach
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- A local civil rights activist has uncovered evidence that First Unitarian Church in Center City was the location where a young Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. heard the speech that inspired him to pursue nonviolence in the advancement of civil rights.
Civil rights activist Patrick Duff made the discovery following years of research, which he submitted to the Pennsylvania State Historic Preservation Office.
The state office recently recommended the church for national listing, which the National Park Service could approve as early as February.
According to Duff, historians originally thought a then-21-year-old King heard a speech on nonviolence by then-Howard University president Dr. Mordecai Johnson at a building on Brown Street.
But through his additional research, which included a Philadelphia Inquirer advertisement and the oral history of Marjorie Penney, one of the founders of the Fellowship House, which hosted Johnson, Duff discovered Johnson's speech took place on Nov. 19, 1950, at First Unitarian Church.
"I could say it was very emotional," Duff said. "Me and my co-author hugged."
The church's archives, which Sr. Rev. Abbey Tennis reviewed with Duff, helped confirm the location and date of the speech.
"It was really exciting to hear about, and it was exciting to go back through our own archives," Tennis said.
Duff added, "Now, there's a place people can touch and feel, can celebrate, a date that they can do it."
Having grown up during the civil rights era, Rev. Zemoria Brandon, a congregant at the church, said it's meaningful to worship in a church that had an outsized impact on millions of people.
"To be in a church where Dr. King, Martin Luther King sat, is very inspiring," Brandon said.
Tennis added, "We could just be a regular person sitting in a pew and all of a sudden, something lights us on fire and turn into a movement that changes everybody's life."
