By Mary Lackie

The Vine City Foundation, Inc., started as a self-help organization, and members want to keep it that way.

“The attitude that people in the slums won’t do anything for themselves is a lot of hogwash. If we have a chance, we can do it,” said Mrs. Helen Howard, long-time Vine City resident and the foundations’ executive director.

An outgrowth of the Vine City council, the foundation was organized around the needs of the community—food, better housing, education. “Its aim is to develop a power base in the slum community so that residents have a chance to break away from hopelessness and start making decisions for themselves,” Mrs. Howard said.

Board members were faced with a decision of their own when the non-profit corporation’s charter was adopted. “We looked around for a name, and discovered that there were a lot of councils in town. We thought the word ‘foundation’ was sort of ritzy, so we called it that,’ Mrs. Howard said.

The foundation renovated an old house at 558 Magnolia St., N.W. The city parks department supplied playground equipment for the treeless vacant lot adjacent to the building. The playground was a necessity for the nursery school run by the foundation’s center.

“Let me tell you a few facts of life,” Mrs. Howard said, “we don’t have the same kind of diet here. People in Vine City live on ‘tote’—the food maids are given to take home—and shiny bones—neck bones boiled with onions and rice until the meat falls off. We fix that up real fancy.”

The families cannot afford the luxury of milk and orange juice for their children. “Do you know how much a quart of milk costs?” Mrs. Howard asked. “And 35 cents a day for school lunches takes a helluva lot out of a budget.”

The nursery provides a hot lunch, milk and orange juice for the 25 pre-school children. Some of the money comes from the thrift shop which is located in the basement of the center. Churches, institutions, and individuals donate the clothes which are sold for 10 to 15 cents. In emergency cases, the clothing is given away.

A 72-year-old retired Salvation Army doctor, William Noble, visited the center and thought it was adequate for the beginnings of a clinic. With the aid of the Fulton County Medical Society, an OEO grant supplemented by Emory University, and volunteer doctors from Grady, Emory University, and the Atlanta Medical Association, the clinic opened Oct. 15, and has served 150 patients since that time.

“I wasn’t concerned will all the political heebie-jeebies connected with the proposals for the clinic. We are just trying to reach people that can’t afford to take a day from work to go to Grady Hospital.” To accommodate the patients, the clinic is open evenings from 7-9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and staffed by volunteer doctors and nurses. Drug supplies are donated.

A savings club sponsored by the foundation has 15 members who are required to pay a dollar a week into a common savings fund. At Christmas, the money is divided. Some weeks it is hard to dig up the money, but the members didn’t want to go in debt for Christmas, Mrs. Howard said.

“The lives of the poor are filled with uncertainties—sudden sickness, the type jobs available to us—even the weather. Do you know what it is like when it’s been raining two days?” Mrs. Howard asked. “When my husband was in construction work, I would wake up in the morning, see the rain, and start to cry. That takes a chunk out of a laboring man’s money. We have to walk a straight line all the time.”

The recent monthly family supper night with a dinner prepared by the staff at the center, attracted 72 people. The dinner is followed by a program for the adults. Guests have discussed urban renewal and watched a film on “The Disadvantaged Child.”

The foundation made a phone call, and Colonial Stores donated 200 to 300 bread and bakery items twice a week. Staff members borrow a truck, collect the bread, and distribute it at the center. Lines of people appear, Vine City is like a small town, and the word gets around that “this is bread day.”

Three tutorial programs are sponsored by the center. Student volunteer teachers form Morris Brown, Morehouse, and Clark College on the nearby campus of Atlanta University, SIMS volunteers (Students Interracial Ministry) and from the Quaker House and Twelfth Street Coffee House assist in the programs.

Wayne Johnson, editor of the bi-monthly Vine City Voice, a foundation publication, opens his home every afternoon to high school students. A 1,000 book library supervised by Judy Clark, an education major at Clark College, is available to the students.

“Judy commutes from a slum in Forest Park where as recently as 1961, people were drinking water from a creek. She is a graduate from a high school that has a reputation of never sending anybody on to college—and people say we don’t try,” said Mrs. Howard.

“We raise hell,” she said. To protest the unsanitary conditions and low salaries, we picketed for a week, and my feet still hurt. I know every hole in that street,” she said.

“Why is it the poor have to keep proving that they are poor?” Mrs. Howard asked. “When you go in for a welfare slip or your monthly food allotment at the welfare office, you have to be able to prove unqualifiedly that you are poor—we should wear a button saying, ‘I’m poor.’”

The mother of four children, Mrs. Howard has two daughters who are college graduates, and twin sons at Washington High School. She ran for the legislature in 1966 but was defeated.

“I don’t want myself promoted; I want the programs promoted,” Mrs. Howard said. “The center has had a tremendous impact on the lives of people here, and we hope to receive support form all over the city.”