A CITY IN CRISIS : Churches Offer Sanctuary From Strife-Torn City

Sinbad the comedian gently and carefully broke the news Friday afternoon to the scores of people amid the sea of blue cots in the basement of First African Methodist Episcopal Church.

“I know this is going to scare some of you but we are going to have to pack you all up and move you to Dorsey High School,” he said into the microphone at the front of the room. “Nobody is abandoning you. Nobody is forsaking you.”

Nevertheless, frightened gasps escaped from some of the scores of people who had found shelter in the church in the West Adams district for up to two days. For some it felt like being forced from the safety of a hospital emergency room back to the scene of the disaster, even though better accommodations had been found for them.

Indeed, as much as any place in embattled South Los Angeles, African-American churches have become trauma centers for neighborhoods that have been hit the worst by violence.

From tiny storefronts to ornate cathedrals, churches immediately began to replace the government, social service agencies and in some cases the family in filling every need of people caught up in the fury.

Churches are where the frightened, the displaced and the desperate are calling first to find out how they can get their electricity restored, where they can go to get prescriptions filled or where to find a hot meal or a cot for the night.

They are also where distant Anglo congregations and residents from as far as Palm Springs have either come or phoned to offer help.

In the first hours of the rioting, the 8,000-member First AME Church, run by the Rev. Cecil (Chip) Murray, became home to a Red Cross disaster shelter and food center and was the place other clergy, politicians--including Gov. Pete Wilson and the Rev. Jesse Jackson--came to meet, make announcements or offer help.

The church also was the command center for emergency street patrols of pastors from all over the city who had been attending a peace rally after Wednesday’s not guilty verdicts in the case of four Los Angeles police officers charged with beating black motorist Rodney G. King. Many of the pastors, still dressed in their Sunday suits, linked arms and strode onto the main thoroughfares near the church, placing themselves between rioters and police officers to prevent confrontations.

It took some other churches--from St. Brigid Catholic Church on Western Avenue to three tiny congregations in the Crenshaw district--a little longer to get organized. But by Saturday, most of them had mounted relief efforts.

Church workers operated informal referral services for people who no longer had markets, restaurants and pharmacies near them or who need to know how to get their mail. They also began to organize people to help those without transportation so they could get to work or make other urgent trips.

With the worst of the violence over, some pastors have organized emergency cleanup patrols and refined plans for the days ahead--when food runs out and people must confront the reality of neighborhoods without many essential services. Without realizing it, some churches had begun long ago to prepare for the roles they are playing, said many of the nearly two dozen pastors interviewed. Some said they saw the violence coming.

“About a year ago we started reorganizing our ministries to focus on unemployment, housing, anything that spoke to the long-term needs that we believed had been ignored and would lead to something like this,” said Father Paul Banet of St. Brigid on Western Avenue at 52nd Street.

“Eventually we knew we were going to have to face this,” he said. “We just didn’t know it would happen so soon.”

The Rev. Edgar Boyd, pastor of Bethel AME Church farther south on Western Avenue, said the economic deprivations in some neighborhoods was “just a powder keg ready to blow.”

Months before the verdicts, he said, he and other clergy had begun to formulate a plan of economic survival for residents in South Los Angeles.

“We’re not just fighting the monster of the immediate needs,” Boyd said. “We are fighting a greater social and economic monster of racism and injustice that is unseen.”

But on Saturday and the three previous days, the immediate needs occupied scores of ministers who individually or in groups ministered to communities consisting mostly of African-Americans and Latinos.

They have been joined by Anglo and Jewish congregations from around Southern California that have pledged to ask their congregations to aid in the relief effort.

“We want to do whatever we can to help out,” said the Rev. Byron Hiller Light of the First Congregational United Church of Christ in Pasadena. “People are just shocked. I think it is therapeutic to reach out.”

Myron J. Taylor, minister of the Westwood Hills Christian Church in Westwood, said church members are working closely with the South Los Angeles churches to make sure needed goods are distributed quickly. Like others, he said he will use his sermon today to discuss the jury verdicts and the violence that followed.

“Its a time for evaluation,” he said. “This happened because of a racism that runs deep in the psyche of our society.”

Black clergy planned to minister to the psychological needs of their congregations, including counseling sessions with children.

About half a dozen young people, 6 to 14 years old, stood outside Bethel AME holding placards bearing motivational messages.

“The riots scared me because people were shooting and burning up places up,” said 10-year-old Georgia Murrell as she held a sign that read: “God Is Watching Over Us.”

At the 200-member Galilee Baptist Church on 48th Street near Crenshaw Boulevard, women were dishing up plates for the hungry people expected to seek food.

About 60 volunteers, some from as far as West Hollywood, were providing rides for those without transportation or distributing clothing and dry goods.

The Rev. G. Lind Taylor said planning for the assistance effort began Wednesday night after he returned to Los Angeles from a trip to Atlanta and found the city in flames.

The next day, he said, he called the Rev. Albert Starr Jr. and the Rev Jarvis L. Collier, both pastors of nearby Baptist churches and began to coordinate a combined relief effort.

“We know that the black church traditionally meets the need of the community,” he said. “When the rubber hits the road, there is no one else who meets their needs like we do.

“People can’t call the mayor at home, but they can sure call their pastors.”

If anyone was looking for Mayor Tom Bradley, however, they might have found him at First AME.

Since Wednesday, the church has been a magnet for Hollywood celebrities, politicians and sports stars, as well as the hungry and those fleeing burned-out homes.

On Saturday, about 1,000 people showed up for cleanup duties or for carrying armloads of donated food and clothing into waiting vans. At the church-owned Richard Allen House across the street, scores of people dressed in African Kente cloth and Malcolm X T-shirts stood in line to transport goods from their cars to rooms inside.

Pac Bell donated 10 phone lines to the church to handle calls from volunteers.

The day before, Sonny Bono, former mayor of Palms Springs and a candidate for the U.S. Senate, was in the crowd while Gov. Wilson held a gathering with community leaders inside the church.

The Rev. T.C. Wilder, pastor of the Ajalon Baptist Church in Palm Springs, came with Bono.

“We just came down to show our support and to find out if there is anything we can do,” Wilder said. A short time later he was in the church basement folding cots.

Among those helping keep order outside was the Rev. James T. Thompson, associate minister of the 150-member Alpha and Omega Baptist Church on West 54th Street.

Thompson had been at a peace rally at the church Wednesday night when the rioting began.

He recalled coming outside afterward and finding the apartment building across the street on fire and another fire a block away threatening the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Co. building, an institution in the black communities of South Los Angeles.

While others rushed to see what could be done, Thompson joined a group of clergymen who hurried to another section of West Adams, where a confrontation was brewing between an angry crowd and police officers.

“About 40 of us locked arms and came from the back of the crowd right into the street between them,” Thompson said. “West Adams was full of (broken) glass. The police were getting ready to storm the youth.”

Thompson said the pastors began talking earnestly with the youths, saying such things as: “I understand how you feel, brother, but we have to find other ways.”

Later standing outside First AME, Thompson dwelled on that image.

“This is what church work is all about,” he said. “This is what has been missing.”