The ones who stay

BALTIMORE—The day before Baltimore melted into riots over the death of Freddie Gray in police custody, New Song Community Church pastor Louis Wilson delivered a sermon to his congregation. For almost 30 years New Song has been in Sandtown, the rough neighborhood in West Baltimore that was at the center of the city’s mayhem. Gray lived in the housing project across the street from the church and was arrested two blocks from the church.

Wilson, who is black, knew what situation he was dealing with, though he only became the lead pastor of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) congregation in January. He grew up in the South Side of Chicago, a neighborhood even more violent than Sandtown. As a teenager he rioted after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968. From ages 14 to 30, he was a drug addict, and he says there were many times he should have died. Then he became a Christian, and spent the next decades working in urban ministry and church planting.

Speaking to his Sandtown congregation that Sunday, he urged them to adopt a merciful, God-like response to what was happening, and also expressed the frustrations in the room.

“If I were some of you who had been here for a while, I would be asking the question … ‘How long?’” he said. “How long do we have to come together and get in a room and build and invest and try to help, and yet, something like this, the community still blows up? … What’s going on Lord?”

New Song’s leadership is concerned that the recent upheaval could drive some church families out of the neighborhood. “We have families who don’t have to live here, white and black,” said Wilson later. “For some, this will be, ‘I tried this for 10 years, 15 years, it’s not happening. I’m tired.’”

For decades before April 27, when 3,000 soldiers arrived to bring order to the burning streets, churches and Christian community development groups have been fighting for Sandtown’s 72 blocks. Sandtown is a largely black neighborhood of about 10,000, the result of redlining practices that forced racial segregation. When segregation practices ended, the blacks who had the resources to leave left. Gradually industrial jobs, a source of income for blacks in Baltimore who did not have the opportunity for higher education, dried up, and the drug trade soon moved in. The neighborhood has the highest number of people in prison of any part of the city. Government money repeatedly has been misspent in the neighborhood.

Out of the spotlight, New Song has made some of those numbers and stories better. It started a school and a Habitat for Humanity arm that built 300 homes. The church runs a health center in the neighborhood, with medical staff from its congregation. New Song elder and Sandtown native Antoine Bennett runs the church’s program for men returning from prison called Men of Valuable Action. Bennett was one of those men 22 years ago, a former drug dealer returning from serving 3½ years in prison for a shooting.

Another longtime church and development ministry in the neighborhood, Newborn Community of Faith Church, has partnered with New Song. Newborn started ministries like Martha’s Place for women recovering from drug addiction, Strength to Love II for ex-offenders, and Jubilee Arts, which offers art and dance classes. Elder C.W. Harris, 65, founded Newborn more than 30 years ago. He has also lived in the neighborhood his whole life.

Sandtown’s Christians want safety and economic development for their neighborhood. They want a change to the way the Baltimore City police treat residents. Harris recalled that city police officers who have stopped him on the street have called him all sorts of expletives and publicly pulled down his pants to search him. That creates no basis for a respectful relationship, he said. But “biblical discipleship,” according to these church leaders, will be the root of all other changes in their neighborhood.

“I hope and pray the system changes,” said Wilson. “But I have to challenge people in this community: If it don’t change, I still got to walk with Jesus. … I may never see it, but maybe my grandkids will. Because God is faithful to His promises.”

The Thursday after the violent protests, hundreds of police officers and soldiers remained gathered at “ground zero,” as residents called the intersection of North Avenue and Pennsylvania Avenue where protesters burned and looted the CVS. Helicopters looped over the area. “They worked for years to get CVS,” Wilson lamented. Its destruction was a huge loss in an area that already had few amenities. Residents also labored for years to revitalize the area just northwest of Sandtown around the Mondawmin Mall, which was looted during the riots.

One Sandtown resident had to go all the way to Catonsville to get her prescriptions, not an option for someone without a car. Some protesters also destroyed ATMs in the area. That afternoon Amelia Harris, the wife of C.W. Harris, tried to take a neighbor to get money to buy a car, but they couldn’t find anywhere to withdraw cash.

The protests had calmed, but in Sandtown violence returned and no police officer was in sight. That day and into the night, Sandtown and the West Baltimore neighborhoods around it saw a spate of shootings and homicides unrelated to the protests. By the end of the evening, five people had been shot, two fatally. Homicides in the city were already ahead of last year’s pace.

During the worst violence, Wilson was supposed to have one of his first days off since he started at New Song. Instead he was out talking to people on the street, and his phone had been ringing off the hook. On Thursday Bennett and Harris met Wilson at the New Song church office. Bennett calls Harris “Pop” and Wilson “Doc Wilson.” Dressed in a suit, Harris had been out and about since 6 in the morning, but by late afternoon he undid his tie and slung it over his shoulder, to his wife’s chagrin.

The New Song church leadership had been wary about aligning itself with outsiders as activists poured into the city, and they had said no to many meetings. “You get 30 preachers in the room, I can guarantee you nothing will get done,” said Wilson.

Harris recalled an earlier pastors’ meeting he attended outside Sandtown, where the organizers asked pastors to sign a paper committing to talk to people on the street. “I said to myself, ‘Weren’t you doing that already?’” Harris said, chuckling.

On Thursday Bennett and Harris agreed to join a meeting that evening with a coalition of neighborhood nonprofits and city council president Jack Young. Harris climbed into Bennett’s car at the church office, and they headed to prepare for the meeting with the coalition leaders at a Catholic church a few blocks away. In the church’s gym, ladies made crab cakes to serve the neighborhood the next day. At the meeting, all of the nonprofit representatives except one were black. They decided their main goal was to get city leadership to recognize Sandtown’s leadership. As the meeting wrapped up, someone brought up the three shootings in West Baltimore so far that day.

“There should be protests for every life,” Harris said with a sigh.

SANDTOWN IS A HUB not only of violence and drugs. New Song’s work is slow, and it has suffered setbacks over the years, but there is fruit, aside from rebuilt homes. Several young people now in their 20s grew up in the neighborhood and have stayed with the neighborhood and the church. The day after the riots, MSNBC interviewed a group of young men standing outside New Song Learning Center.

“We’re here standing strong,” Terrell Johnson, 29, who grew up in Sandtown and is now on the worship team at New Song, told the TV reporter. “We didn’t let this community bring us down. We’re struggling, but we’re looking how to build it up.”

Harris says the neighborhood has taught him “a lot about how to survive.” The neighborhood is famous for its snowball, a treat of fluffy shaved ice in a Styrofoam cup. Neighbors talk on the street and look out for each others’ needs. Neighbors helped clean up after the riots. “You drive around here any time day or night you won’t see anyone sleeping in the gutter,” said Bennett. “We live 15 or 20 deep in one house.”

That Thursday, children were doing wheelies on their bikes outside the New Song Learning Center. At the Catholic church, a West Baltimorean named Charlotte was making angels out of brightly colored yarn. Every Christmas the church hosts an Angel Tree event, providing gifts on behalf of incarcerated parents to their children. The church members had just decided, because of the chaos in the city, to have Christmas in July instead.

“God ain’t forgot about Sandtown,” Wilson preached that Sunday. “He’s an awesome and a mighty God. God said, ‘I remember my covenant.’ How long? Not long. I don’t know when, but it will be a ‘when.’ Why? Because He’s that kind of God.” Members of the congregation clapped and said, “That’s right.”