TRIUMPHANT SENDOFF
Civil rights champion Edith Savage-Jennings remembered as loving mother, friend, problem-solver
TRENTON » Edith Savage-Jennings will forever be remembered as a civil rights champion, but the late community activist on Saturday also was remembered for being a loving mother, problem-fixer and woman of God.
The Rev. Frank Smart, who became Savage-Jennings’ pastor five months ago when he took over the reins of Greater Mount Zion AME Church in Trenton, received great insights from her.
“I had no idea that what you read is not enough. Getting it from the source is everything,” Smart said of Savage-Jennings at her funeral service Saturday at Greater Mount Zion. “She told me, ‘I believe you have what it takes to bring Greater Mount Zion in the direction it needs to go, and I’m going to help you.’”
Indeed, Savage-Jennings in her final year of life continued to provide others with key advice as a sage of wisdom or a “know-it-all,” as one family member put it. Born in the state of Florida in 1924, she died last Sunday at her Ewing Township home at the age of 93 following a brief illness.
At the funeral, Yvette Vant described Savage-Jennings as being one of her “favorite aunts,” calling the late champion of civil rights and social justice a “spiritual go-to person” who always had relevant biblical passages for any situation. “She loved the Lord,” Vant said. “Edith taught us to be good human beings, good adults so we could carry on.”
Legacy preserved
A young Edith SavageJennings organized the major civil rights rally when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came here to New Jersey’s capital city in 1957, and she spoke with him just hours before he was assassinated in 1968. King wanted her to oversee his wife and children if something bad happened to him — an omen that sealed Savage-Jennings’ fate of going the next 49 years as a close friend and servant to the King family.
Savage-Jennings lobbied to make Trenton the first city — and New Jersey among the first states — to declare Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. She also lobbied for legislation to create the New Jersey Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Commission, where she served as a commissioner.
Of the 44 individual men to serve as president of the United States, one-fourth of them have invited Savage-Jennings to the White House, starting with Franklin D. Roosevelt and ending with Barack Obama. Savage-Jennings also had a close relationship with former Trenton Mayor Doug Palmer, who was one of the dignitaries who attended her funeral on Saturday.
Jim Johnson, a New Jersey Democrat who ran unsuccessfully for governor this year, described SavageJennings as being “a great spirit.” She recently asked him, “‘Are you for the people?’” Johnson said, “because Ms. Edith was for the people, all people.”
“What she said came at you with the force of a hurricane,” Johnson said of Savage-Jennings at the funeral. “It doesn’t matter what bad news you were dealing with. She made it all right.”
Irene Goldman, friend and confidante of the civil rights icon, described Savage-Jennings with four words — “feisty, fair, formidable, fixer” — adding that Savage-Jennings “loved to laugh and hear stories about your children.”
Physical limitations never stopped Savage-Jennings from dedicating her life to humanitarian causes, according to Bishop Gregory G.M. Ingram, who said, “Edith did more in a wheelchair than most people standing or running.”
The funeral at Greater Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church featured hymns of celebration, prayers of comfort, recitation of scripture, expressions of love and a video presentation that gave a snapshot of the numerous awards and honors that Savage-Jennings received over the course of her 93 years on Earth. More than 200 people attended.
As the service was coming to a conclusion around 1 p.m., it started to rain as if the heavens were shedding tears in the lead-up to interment, which was set to occur Saturday afternoon at Greenwood Cemetery in Hamilton.
“Dear mother, Edith Savage-Jennings, thank you for blessing me to be the man I am today,” Stephen Savage said of his late mom at the funeral. “You will forever be in my heart.”