Ethel Robinson Lawrence (March 16, 1926 - July 19, 1994) was a civil rights activist who was known as the "Rosa Parks of affordable housing". Lawrence was the lead plaintiff in the Mount Laurel, New Jersey litigation for affordable housing, which led to the New Jersey Fair Housing Act, the New Jersey Council on Affordable Housing (COAH) and the Mount Laurel doctrine. In her final years, Lawrence worked closely with attorney Peter O'Connor to start the non-profit organization Fair Share Housing Development Inc., which built over 200 units for moderate- to low-income tenants in Mount Laurel.
Early life
Lawrence was the second of eight children born to Mary and Leslie Robinson. Lawrence's ancestors had resided in Mount Laurel since the nineteenth-century when her slave ancestors had used the Underground Railroad stations organized by the Quakers who had made the Mount Laurel area a sanctuary to runaways during the Civil War. Growing up, Lawrence attended the segregated school on Moorestown-Mount Laurel Road. Lawrence's mother, Mary, was a religious and civic-minded woman who instilled similar values in all her children. At her mother's urging, sixteen-year-old Lawrence, with other African American youth, demanded to be seated in the "whites only" section of a local movie theater.
Adult life
Lawrence met and married Thomas Lawrence (who died in 1979), and together they reared nine children: four boys and five girls. In 1955, Ethel and Thomas purchased their own home in Mount Laurel. Struggling to maintain their home and support their children, Lawrence decided to enroll in college at the Bank Street College of Education in New York and received a degree in early childhood education. She went on to be employed as a pre-school teacher for Daycare 100.
Lawrence's civil rights work placed a significant and often dangerous burden on her family, specifically her children. One of her daughters, Ethel Lawrence-Halley, remembers: "At first, some of the kids we used to play with told us they wouldn't play with us anymore. My sister and I had dogs set on us while we were walking. Then came the words and the threats. I'd never been called the N-word in my life until then. People called my mother a troublemaking bitch. We had to change our phone number so many times I lost count. The worst it got was when somebody shot out my mother's bedroom window." However, Lawrence persisted in her civic work because she believed that her family, and her neighbors' families, had the same rights to affordable housing as the new wealthy, suburban residents.
Mount Laurel I
Lawrence was an officer, pianist, and director of the Young People's Dept. (YPD) of Jacob's Chapel, A.M.E. (African Methodist Episcopal) Church in Mount Laurel. Around 1960, Mount Laurel officials were condemning and tearing down the substandard homes of many "lower income" people; however, no efforts were made to assist them in relocating elsewhere in Mount Laurel. As a result, Lawrence, along with Reverend Stuart Wood and other church members, formed a non-profit corporation, called The Springville Community Action Committee, to develop low- and moderate-income housing. In 1969, the Township zoning board denied the 36-unit housing project proposed by the Action Committee, with Bill Haines, the Mayor at the time, saying, "If you people can't afford to live in our town, then you'll just have to leave."
Outraged, the Committee sued. At Camden Regional Legal Services, three young lawyers—Peter O'Connor, Carl Bisgaier, and Ken Meiser—took on their case, with Lawrence agreeing to be the lead plaintiff. The lawsuit accused the township of using its zoning laws to discriminate against poor residents. In 1975, the Supreme Court of New Jersey ruled in favor of Lawrence, in a ruling called Mount Laurel I. Mount Laurel I holds that all New Jersey municipalities have an obligation under the New Jersey Constitution to provide their fair share of the region's need for low-income and moderate-income housing.
However, in 1976, in response to the ruling, Mount Laurel Township changed its zoning law, allowing the low-income housing project to be built, but on unstable, swampy land. As a result, Lawrence and her neighbors returned to court.