Thursday, October 1, 2026
Jean Zeigler grew up in rural Alabama in the Jim Crow era, in a family she described as “poverty-stricken.” Much of the food on her family’s table, as well as her education, was provided by a local Catholic church.
She knew she needed to leave the impoverishment of the South, and like many thousands of others, migrated north — in her case, to Long Beach. But she never abandoned her faith, or lost her enthusiasm for helping others who were poor or in need. Her efforts over the years led her to join Long Beach’s chapter of the NAACP, and she eventually became the first African-American to serve on the Long Beach Housing Authority’s board of commissioners and helped found the city’s Martin Luther King Center. She also opened a soul-food restaurant on Park Avenue, and sponsored a girls’ softball team.
For her efforts on behalf of the city, Zeigler, who is coy about her age, was honored at a City Council meeting on Feb. 18.
“Ms. Zeigler [was] an advocate and community organizer before the term community organizer was a thing,” Councilwoman Elizabeth Treston said. “I am honored to present this proclamation, in recognition of Black History Month, to Jean Zeigler.”
Zeigler, the third of six children, was raised by her mother, a caregiver and field worker for a wealthy white family, and her father, a farmer. She attributed her survival to her faith and her church, Holy Ghost Catholic Mission, which helped feed and educate her family.
In her early 20s, she took a two-day ride on a Greyhound bus from Montgomery, Ala., to become a domestic worker for a family in Lido Beach. “It was very confusing, relocating from a rural area to a city like Long Beach,” she said. “I didn’t know what to expect.”
After two years of cleaning and babysitting for the Lido family, she got a job as an inspector at a toy factory in East Rockaway, and began studying at Nassau Community College. She lived in a hotel on Park Avenue with a number of other girls who had migrated from the South. Through her job and schooling, she began to notice that there was more to life than just work.
“I think that was the beginning of having some idea of what Long Beach was really like . . .,” Zeigler said. “I also became aware of the needs of the community.” The city she got to know when she first arrived, with the majority of the African-American community living in the North Park area, wasn’t much different than it is today. “There seemed to be two separate activities and involvement that was happening,” she said.
She attended City Council meetings, and joined the NAACP. She recalled one council meeting at which housing and landlords were the major topics. She decided to speak on behalf of tenants who were being taken advantage of by landlords, she recalled, and managed to help them get more benefits. This experience became the foundation for her work for the Housing Authority.
Just a few weeks after that council meeting, Zeigler got a call from an anti-poverty agency called the Can Do Center — which is known today as the Economic Opportunity Commission of Nassau County — and was asked to become a community organizer. During her time there, she helped many families and individuals get the services they needed to survive.
She had such a knack for community advocacy that she became the Can Do Center’s first youth director. The center was eventually closed, however, replaced by the Martin Luther King Center, which Zeigler and other community leaders founded.
At the new center, Zeigler mentored a boy named James Hodge, whom she remembers as hardworking and strongly opinionated. Hodge, who eventually became the chairman of the MLK Center, said that Zeigler was a role model for him. “Ms. Zeigler was one of my inspirations growing up,” he said, “and her work in the community has helped many people.”
In the mid-1970s, she became one of the first African-Americans to open a restaurant in Long Beach — the Para-Mar, at the corner of Park Avenue and Magnolia Boulevard, which served teachers, students and city workers. She described being an entrepreneur as one of her biggest achievements, especially when compared with what her mother suffered.
In Alabama, she said, her mother “was not allowed to enter from the front [door] for the family she worked for, and she would have to eat outside.”
Though the Para-Mar was successful, Zeigler also had a second job cleaning houses to help pay the bills. And she found the time to organize and sponsor a women’s softball team, which, she said, helped unite the community.
After 12 years in the restaurant business, she became a credit analyst for the Central Federal Savings Bank in Mineola, and then a payroll clerk for the city of Long Beach, retiring in 2008.
Growing up, she said, she had set a goal “to get out and help my parents get out of the situation we were born in.” And that, she added, is the achievement that gives her the greatest sense of pride.
