Black Churches Filled The Void In New Orleans Left by Agencies And The Red Cross

w/picCaption: A wall behind the balcony of the Union Bethel AME Church in New Orleans was torn away by Hurricane Katrina. NNPA Photo/Shon SturdivantBy Hazel Trice Edney and Zenitha PrinceNNPA (This is the sixth of an 8-part series of stories about the Gulf Coast and the road to recovery after Hurricane Katrina. This project is a cooperative effort between the the National Newspaper Publishers Association and the Baltimore Afro.) LAKE CHARLES, La. (NNPA) – The Hurricane Katrina disaster led to a record $826 million in donations to the Red Cross within the first month of the August hurricane, far more than collected for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the 2004 tsunami combined. At the government level, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was formed in 1979 to consolidate the federal response to disasters and emergencies, bringing together such fragmented agencies as the Federal Disaster Assistance Administration, the Defense Department’s Defense Civil Preparedness Agency, the Federal Insurance Administration and the National Fire Prevention and Control Administration. Three years ago, FEMA was absorbed into the newly-created Department of Homeland Security. Yet, as thousands of New Orleans’ predominately Black population faced the aftermatch of the hurricane, it has been the Black church – not government agencies or the American Red Cross – that has provided Blacks with the quickest and most reliable service. “The Black church was the first responder,” says Bishop C. Garnett Hennings, supervisor of 284 African Methodist Episcopal churches across Mississippi and Louisiana, who also lost his New Orleans home in the flood and had 31 of his churches damaged. “And the people were prepared to come to the church who knew nothing about FEMA, who knew nothing about the Red Cross, who didn’t trust the Red Cross, who certainly didn’t trust the federal government. “They went to the one that would be there for them. It was the church. A couple of our major churches were open before the hurricane struck because there was a warning that it actually happened and we knew the need was going to be there. Some churches had 200 to 300 people in their buildings. They didn’t get the recognition that the Astrodome got in Houston, but they were there.” From empathizing with the emotional devastation to assisting with financial needs, food, housing, clothing, and counseling, thousands of Black congregations around the nation led the way in carrying out the mission that has been the Black church’s legacy in times of crisis – caring for the hurting and left out and fighting for justice. “We’re needed. We are needed,” proclaims the Rev. Dr. Vashti Murphy McKenzie Bishop in the A.M.E. Church. “Many times we think government can do everything. Government cannot do everything. The Red Cross cannot do everything. There was a lack of sensitivity as far as our community was concerned. There was a lot of disturbance taking place. And unless we had stepped into the gap, I think the wailing and gnashing of teeth would have been at a greater level. As far as the African-American church community, we have always been at the forefront as a helping agent. We have a track record of being involved in our community. We have a track record of providing services. Our mandate has always been to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, cheer the fallen and the desperate.” Rev. Charles Smith, pastor of the Shiloh Baptist Church in Baton Rouge, agrees that the church reacted quickly. “We went right to work,” says Smith. Around 8 A.M. one day, his wife asked: “What can we do?” It didn’t take long for her to receive an answer. ”By noon we had pulled together a committee of people and were ready to start feeding people,” Smith recalls. “The day after the storm, we fed over 200 people here in the church and that continued really for three or four weeks. And once we started bringing people from the shelters and streets to feed them, we realized that the shelter situation was as bad – if not worse – than the food situation. So we went to work to make the adjustments that we had to make in our building in order to provide shelter as well.” More than 1 million homeless people from Louisiana and Mississippi have now found housing throughout the U. S. In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, there was mass confusion. “We didn’t know where we were going or what we were going to do,” says Sharon Douglas, who moved to the Shiloh church shelter with her husband, Clarence, their 4-year-old son and 8-year-old daughter. Having left New Orleans during the evacuation two days before the storm, the family found temporary shelter at the St. George Elementary School in Baton Rouge. But after only a few days, shelter residents had to evacuate in order for the school to start for the fall. That’s when someone told them about Shiloh. The Douglas family packed their belongings and drove 12 miles to the shelter. “When we got here, everybody welcomed us and everything was so put in place and to help us that we actually found ourselves going through the storm without being in it because we were blessed. We were truly blessed to come here,” says Douglas. “It’s really nice, really nice.” The couple and their children, like 200 others, slept on air mattresses in a huge gymnasium at the back of the church and were given three hot meals a day. Her 4-year-old was able to go to pre-school at the church and her daughter attended a nearby elementary school. Within a few weeks, Douglas, who had been an attendant at a New Orleans nursing home, was given a job as an intake coordinator at the church shelter and was paid through Katrina relief funds by the city of New Orleans. The church shelter closed in December and the family now resides at the FEMA-sponsored Renaissance Village trailer park in Baton Rouge while awaiting repairs to their home on the West Bank of New Orleans. Douglas, who still works at the church’s day care center, will never forget the church’s hospitality. “What would I have done without it? I really don’t know,” she says. Even those who found temporary homes were aided by Black church missionaries. Elijah Ministries of New Orleans went looking for people to bless, says Yolanda Gibson, the mother of 16-year-old twins, a girl and boy, living in the 576-unit Renaissance Village, the largest FEMA trailer park in the nation. “They just came and asked, “What can we do for you all,” recalls Gibson. Within days, the ministry members had delivered 650 new coats to adults and children living in the village, with a promise of 1,000 more on the way. “They also gave us trash cans and RV tissue,” Gibson says, referring to a quick-dissolving toilet paper made especially for mobile homes. “It lets me know that there is somebody out there who cares and has compassion in their hearts. You could see the genuine compassion.” Though, he too, was in need, Pastor Elijah Mealancon, head of the 6-year-old Elijah Ministries, was busy giving. “The Lord gave us this. This is our love for people, even as we are victims ourselves,” says Mealancon, whose home in uptown New Orleans was severely damaged by wind and flooding. Mealancon also lost his church building, where he ran youth programs and worshipped with 40-100 parishioners on Sunday mornings. He now has three members with him, including two staffers. “The rest of them are spread around the world,” he says. But, with funding from grants and donations from around the country, Mealancon has been able to help thousands of people in Renaissance Park. “I wasn’t focused on my problems,” Mealancon says. “I believe the Bible says that the greatest among you, let him be a servant. And I just started serving. I made myself available.” As Black churches in Louisiana and around the nation rose to assist in the crisis, dozens of New Orleans churches are estimated to have been destroyed in the floods of Hurricane Katrina, leaving Mealancon and other pastors without their flocks and pulpits. “I’ve wired over $5,000 to people in need,” says Deacon Allen Stephens, administrator of the St. Philip the Apostle Catholic Church in New Orleans. Stephens’ house and church were both destroyed in the flood. Still, as church administrator, he must oversee the 450 families on the membership roster, though they are strewn about the U. S. He did that from Philadelphia, where he now lives with his wife and two children in a home given by his extended family. Bishop Hennings knows first-hand what it was like to see a home in ruins. “It was atrocious. I mean, it was beyond my own imagination of what it would be like,” says Hennings. “There was mud all over everything on the lower level. And the water line on the house was all the way up to the second floor. I had one of these huge TVs. It had turned face down and the water had moved it out of the room it was in into another room altogether. And the refrigerator was on the floor. I had a [1998] Mercedes in the garage and it had been assaulted by the salt,” he recalls. “All my books were gone, my clothes were gone, my robes were gone. The water had just damaged everything so badly.” He stayed in hotels and in the homes of friends until he was able to move into a temporary home in Jackson, Miss., where he now resides while waiting to see how much his flood and homeowner’s insurance will cover. “It allowed me to have a different kind of identification with other people and their losses,” says Hennings. He says the tragedy has even changed the nature of worship. “People are worshipping with a passion which is quite different than it might have been before Katrina,” he explains. “It made me think about slavery time, what it would have been like for people to go through the horror of slavery all week long, then have the opportunity to come into the house of God or to go into whatever area they had set aside to worship God. And how they must have poured out their souls.” That comfort offered by the Black church has been pervasive throughout the African-American struggle for freedom, says civil rights icon Jesse Jackson Sr. “They kept people’s spirits alive and hope until emancipation came,” says Jackson, who organized buses that returned 10 times into flood zones that FEMA said was too dangerous to enter. “It is the strongest organization in the Black community. It owns the most land. It has the biggest disciplined constituents. It raises the most money. It has the most credibility,” Jackson says. “And so, whenever the storms start to rise, it rises to the occasion.” Even as pastors reach out to one another, those who desire to rebuild their churches can apply for assistance from the $20 million Interfaith Fund, which is a part of the $100 million raised by former presidents George Herbert Walker Bush and Bill Clinton for Katrina relief. An advisory committee for the Interfaith fund is being co-chaired by the Rev. Bill Gray, senior pastor of Hope Baptist Church in Philadelphia and Bishop T. D. Jakes, pastor of Potters House in Dallas. “What happened with Katrina, it didn’t create a momentum in the Black church. I think it exposed a momentum that already existed,” says Jakes. “Most of those churches that were feeding the hungry had already been feeding the hungry. And so, it just gave us a stage to do what we’ve already been doing.” Rev. Gray says that stage needs to be maintained. “It is important that these religious institutions be re-established, rebuilt and resume their ministries in the storm-battered area. Why? Because without them, there is no community,” says Gray, former head of the United Negro College Fund. “We always come together when there’s trouble. When it comes down to it, everybody’s in the same boat. And that boat is the old ship of Zion – the church.”