C. Adrienne Rhodes, founder of the Preserving Black Haddonfield History Project, introduces “What Would Martin Say?” forum panelists P. Kenneth Burns (right photo, left to right), Judge Karen McGlashan Williams, Dr. Stephanie Navarro Silvera and Dr. Kendra Boyd.
Nearly 100 people listened to four panelists discuss economic opportunity, wealth equity, health care, environmental justice, race relations and other challenges during the “What Would Martin Say?” forum on Jan. 18 – two days before the Martin Luther King Jr. national holiday.
Sponsored by the Preserving Black Haddonfield History Project, the forum saw residents, volunteers and more than 30 students file into the Lutheran Church of Our Savior on Wayne Avenue for an afternoon about the struggles facing people in poverty.
“I want to begin by congratulating and thanking you for venturing out to explore sensitive topics with us,” said C. Adrienne Rhodes, founder of the history project, before introducing forum panelists. “We are about to begin a new era. In this soul-searching moment, we are facing a crisis of connection.
“Yet, we know building community ought to be our goal,” she added. “So what kind of community? What kind of America do we want to be? This is the question. Growing up as a child of the ’60s, I came to view anyone who wasn’t part of the solution as part of the problem.”
Rhodes acknowledged Linda E. Nelson of the Lutheran Church of Our Savior’s Peace and Justice Committee. After they met by chance, Nelson proposed putting something together.
“Fewer than 90 days later,” Rhodes said. “Here we are. Thank you Linda.”
Presented in partnership with the church, the forum’s promotional partners included the Haddonfield Human Relations Committee (HHRC), the borough library, the Cherry Hill African American Civic Association and the Lawnside Historical Society.
Rhodes asked the student volunteers who helped to set up the forum to stand as they received applause from the audience. She also thanked Jen Sheran of HHRC and Al Schmidt of the Haddonfield Lions Club.
“Dr. King said, ‘The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of convenience and comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy,’” Rhodes noted. “Today we are standing in the dawn of a new era and we have the good fortune of being joined by three thought leaders. They’re all women, and a brave man will moderate this discussion.”
P. Kenneth Burns, president of the Society of Professional Journalists-New Jersey Chapter and a reporter for WHYY New Jersey, was that man.
“It’s an honor to moderate this conversation about Martin Luther King Jr.,” he noted, adding that the forum is for everyone and not a blame game.
Burns then welcomed female panelists Dr. Kendra Boyd, an assistant professor of history at Rutgers-Camden; Dr. Stephanie Navarro Silvera, a professor in the Department of Public Health at Montclair State University; and Judge Karen McGlashan Williams, a federal judge in New Jersey who was confirmed in 2021.
The classic arc of the civil rights movement started with Brown vs. the Board of Education in 1954 and continued with the 1963 March on Washington and passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts in 1964 and 1965, Boyd explained.
“Actually it stared in the 1930s and ’40s, with the 1941 March on Washington for economic justice organized by labor organizer Phillip Randolph, and the efforts by African American leaders to desegregate the military,” she pointed out. “The March on Washington in 1963 was for jobs and freedom. Economic justice is at the core of Black freedom and struggle.”
Boyd added that King often addressed wealth disparity and poverty. He was assassinated in 1968 while supporting a strike by sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee.
Silvera addressed wealth inequities.
“White, non-Hispanic and Asian families tend to do better,” she maintained. “Black and Hispanic families making $50,000 per year live in poorer neighborhoods than typical white families earning $20,000. Where you live determines where you go to school.”
People living in poverty-stricken neighborhoods would be healthier if they had access to fresh and healthy food, according to Silvera, who added that the poor often find health insurance unaffordable.
“For the first time in 50 years, life expectancy has gone down in the United States,” she revealed, telling the forum audience that Blacks, Native Americans and Alaskan natives have the lowest life expectancy.
“During COVID-19, these groups died at significantly higher rates,” Silvera recounted. “Many of them had low-wage jobs and still had to go out and work. There is so much we can do to give people an opportunity to live better.”
Judge Williams observed that the judiciary should “reflect your population.”
“That is the goal,” she emphasized. “We have come a long way.”
Only one of 336 federal judges was African American in 1945, Williams stated. Seventeen years later, the number was only six.
“In 2024,” she reported, “we had 200-plus African American judges out of 1,100 federal judges. The person doling out justice is relatable.”
“I interpret law,” Williams added, referencing the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. “These laws are interpreted and upheld daily in cases before the federal courts.”
Williams said that the courts are doing better helping people in the criminal justice system, and praised the Supervision to Aid Reentry Program, also known as Reentry Court. Its probation officers help residents on supervised release transition back to society and provide assistance with education, training, employment and other needs.