Celebrate Black History Month with an unsung hero

Did you know that South Jersey was home to an unsung hero of the civil rights movement who helped revolutionize the affordable housing movement forever?

Celebrate this Black History Month by learning about the heroic and inspiring struggle of Ethel Lawrence, who is often called the “Rosa Parks of affordable housing.”

Ethel's epic battle began in the late 1960s when she joined forces with a brilliant team of lawyers — Carl S. Bisgaier, Kenneth E. Meiser and Peter J. O’Connor — to resist exclusionary zoning in Mount Laurel, which had shut out the development of affordable homes for the poor.

A teacher, mom and wife, Ethel braved racist death threats to stand up for her children’s right to continue to raise their families in her beloved hometown, where her African-American ancestors had lived for generations.

Ethel's fight led to an unprecedented legal victory that has been hailed as one of the most important civil rights decisions of modern times.

Thanks to this landmark litigation, known nationally as the Mount Laurel Doctrine, more than 70,000 low-income families have won the opportunity to live in safe communities near decent jobs and good schools.

It took decades to win the Mount Laurel court battles, which later led to the passage of NJ's Fair Housing Act in 1985. But Ethel refused to stop there.

In 1986, she partnered with O’Connor, who founded the nonprofit Fair Share Housing Development (FHSD) to implement the settlement agreement in the Mount Laurel litigation. 

Ethel R. Lawrence Homes (ERLH) first opened its doors in 2000, six years after its namesake had passed away from cancer, and FSHD’s flagship development continues to honor her amazing legacy more than 20 years later.

Driving by ERLH’s lovely one-, two- and three-bedroom townhomes set on 62 beautifully landscaped acres in Mount Laurel, you’d never know the Burlington County complex was affordable housing. The award-winning development has set the gold standard for low-income housing in NJ, reaching families with incomes between 10%-30% of median income.

In a book about the historic development, Princeton University praised ERLH as a “vindication of Ethel Lawrence’s dream” to provide a “proven pathway out of poverty for disadvantaged minority families throughout the United States.”

None of the fears expressed by the opponents of FSHD’s affordable housing development were ever realized: Princeton found no evidence of increased crime, higher taxes or a decrease in property values.

But the promise of a better future for families living in Ethel R. Lawrence Homes is real. Research has shown that a child living in a high-opportunity town like Mount Laurel will grow up to earn double the income of a young person from nearby Camden. They are also more likely to attend college and avoid teen pregnancy and single parenthood.

Low-income families that move to high-opportunity towns also report feeling happier and safer, and are less likely to suffer from costly and debilitating health conditions such as diabetes, obesity, depression and anxiety.

Many ERLH families are led by single mothers, heroes themselves, who often toil at two jobs to make ends meet. "You work hard so that your children will have more opportunities than you have. The ultimate hope is that your children do better than you ever did."

To ensure the children of ERLH can take advantage of all the opportunities available to them in a high-achieving school district, FSHD runs an education center named after Peter’s mother, a single mom herself and a longtime NJ schoolteacher whose selflessness made her a hero to her son and his brother James. Nearly all of the children who attend FSHD’s Education Center graduate high school, which compares favorably to their peers from Camden where graduations rates hover near 60 percent.

Because of the pandemic, all tutoring services at FSHD’s Education Center are currently remote. The goal is to help ERLH children stay on track during an era of remote learning that threatens to dramatically widen the achievement gap between rich and poor students.

A short documentary about Ethel’s life is currently making the film festival rounds. It was named a finalist in the 2020 Bucks Fever FilmFest, and will appear in the 2021 Garden State Film Festival and Nassau Film Festival. The Ethel documentary was written, directed and produced by former reality panelist and Pennsbury High School graduate Katia Barricklow. Katia is a resident of Yardley and a junior at Sarah Lawrence College.

More on Ethel and Peter's work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VrpBdchnsw

More on the documentary: https://katiakalei.wixsite.com/website

Denise Barricklow is FSHD’s Director of Development Fund and a resident of Yardley.