Friday will be "Edith Savage-Jennings Day" in her native Trenton Watch video
TRENTON -- Trenton native Edith Savage Jennings, who counted Martin Luther King, Jr., as a close friend and had a penpal in first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, had a front row seat to the civil rights movement and was integral in helping to build the momentum locally.
The city on Thursday is issuing a proclamation honoring her decades-long contributions and declared Friday as "Edith Savage-Jennings Day" in the city.
"Trenton City Council with admiration and respect salutes Ms. Edith Savage-Jennings for being a steadfast champion for civil rights," the resolution reads.
When she was 10, Savage-Jennings presented flowers to Roosevelt on behalf of the New Jersey State Federation of Colored Women's Clubs. The two struck up a friendship that would last until the first lady's death in 1962.
In Trenton's Capitol Theater, blacks were relegated to the balcony, but the 13-year-old and a group of friends from the NAACP Youth Chapter sat in the second row on the main floor and refused to move.
In early 1956, not long after Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat, Savage-Jennings asked her to speak at the Mt. Zion AME Church in Trenton and the two formed a lifelong friendship.
The following year, she was introduced to King after hosting a fundraiser for the movement and became a close family friend and adviser with him and his wife, Coretta Scott King.
She has been invited to the White House under 10 presidents and was even recruited by President John F. Kennedy to aid in a peacekeeping mission to Mississippi.
For much of her life, the 91-year-old has marched, spoken and worked to bring about racial and gender equality.
She's been inducted into the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tenn., had her name placed on the Wall of Tolerance in Montgomery, Ala. and had a museum in Brooklyn named after her.
Cristina Rojas may be reached at crojas@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @CristinaRojasTT. Find The Times of Trenton on Facebook.