Wurf was extremely active in the civil rights movement. He helped establish the first New York State chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) in the late 1940s. He was a close associate of Martin Luther King Jr., who was working in support of the Memphis sanitation strike when he was assassinated in April 1968. "Let us never forget that Martin Luther King, on a mission for us, was killed in this city. He helped bring us this victory," Wurf later said. Although Wurf did not back the strike initially, due to the violent atmosphere, he supported it after it went into effect.