How a park might create "an environment of peace, love, and opportunity"
The idea to build a park connected to the memory of Harlan Bruce Joseph began in 2018, on the 50th anniversary of a difficult and tragic night in Trenton's history.
On the 9th of April,1968, Harlan Joseph, a young community activist who grew up on Carroll Street around the corner from this proposed site, was shot by a police officer. Fifty years later, The Trenton Project, a documentary workshop at Princeton University, hosted an evening dedicated to community memory, one of the first gatherings in the city to publicly reckon with this killing. That event has led to other responses in the community, including a creative conversation between The Rescue Mission of Trenton and the office of Michael Graves Architects. Together, they brainstormed the idea for a park along Ewing Street to match the needs of the Mission and its clients, creativity about a disused urban space, and a desire to weave the memory of Harlan Joseph into the physical fabric of the city. This website and growing group of stakeholders are part of making that park a reality.
The park, which will be maintained by the Mission, will provide amenities for the neighborhood: native gardens, places for gathering, spaces for artistic expression and performance. It will serve as a natural environment in which to share one's voice, feel pride, and reflect on purpose. Its design is dedicated to inspiring and nurturing the many children who pass through and by on their way to nearby schools. The streetscapes adjacent to the park zones will be enhanced to slow traffic and create a welcome focal point for the neighborhood.
"I knew Bruce. I lived on Carroll Street. And I just wanted to say. I am here. Carroll Street is here. We are here to support..."
--- a neighbor, April 2018
When Harlan Joseph was shot and killed in 1968, just blocks from his home on Carroll Street, his family wrote a letter to their fellow Trentonians. In it, they imagined that the best possible memorial to the young man they called Bruce, would be "people working" to create "a city where young people could grow maturity in an environment of equal opportunity." This proposed park---two blocks from Joseph's home---aims to do that work.
Your Community, Your Voice
"As a lifelong Trentonian and a daughter of a pan-Africanist, I believe there's power in the momentum of memory. When we honor our ancestors, people pay attention. And then we can tap into the power of memory.”
- DuEwa M. Edwards-Dickson
Chief of Supportive Services
The Rescue Mission of Trenton
Designing and building this park requires input of many kinds. We are just at the beginning stages of gathering ideas, expertise and lived experience as we imagine how this park can best serve the community. This website offers a record of how that process began and is expanding to bring in more voices and stakeholders.
The design process will involve multiple stages of conversation, input, sketches, plan, fundraising, and review. We invite you to join the process, first by signing up to be notified about upcoming gatherings and discussions. In addition, please feel free to contact any of the team directly with your questions and ideas. This is your park!
The Harlan Bruce Joseph Story · A Trenton Story
Harlan Bruce Jospeh is a touchstone for the Ewing-Carroll neighborhood, not only because of his tragic death at age 19 but also, and importantly, for the light he brought to his community. We celebrate the way he thought, even as a young man, about civic engagement.
Harlan came of age in Trenton, mentored and shaped by teachers, pastors, counselors, family, and friends. He attended Junior Five and Trenton Central High School. He grew up in a bustling, family neighborhood on Carroll Street. He worked, often with younger people, at Mercer Street Friends Center, the YMCA, and his church, both Union Baptist and his grandfather's church, Macedonia Baptist.
What makes Harlan's story most remarkable is that its outline is reflected in the work of so many young people in Trenton today, who are quietly making a difference close to home. That humble yet monumentally important work is what this park aims to celebrate and foster.
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In 1968, in the protests following the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King Jr., Harlan Joseph returned to Trenton from college at Lincoln University. As a member of Mayor Carmen Armenti's Youth Council, he attended meetings about how to maintain calm on the streets of the city on those turbulent nights. Then, on the early evening of Dr. King's funeral, he was shot by a white police officer on the corner of State and Stockton Street.
The following day, Mayor Armenti, Governor Hughes and the Reverend Howard Woodson visited the family on Carroll Street to offer condolences, but the larger injustices of this killing were never fully reckoned with. But public history is always being re-considered. In 2023, the city, led by city council member Jennifer Williams and Mayor Gusciora, honored Harlan's memory with a historical marker on Broad Street. Like that marker, this park aims to a productive way to engage with this piece of the past.