By Chris Eckl

Mechanicsville, Cabbagetown, Vine City, Summerhill are neighborhoods of shattered windows, shattered hopes and shattered people.

They are neighborhoods where thousands of poor people - black and white - live out of sight and out of the mainstream of Atlanta’s life. They are neighborhoods where the next meal can be an overwhelming problem. They are like other slum areas in the city - crowded, run down, depressing.

But there is a spark of life in these areas, a desire for improvement, for education, for recreation, for all the “good things of life.”

These people beg for help, hope for help, pray for help, scream for help. Most of the time their voices were not heard because the rest of Atlanta is not aware of them.

A Day of Awareness, sponsored by the Department of Catholic Social Services, was held last week to present the pleas of these people to the more fortunate, to shatter misconceptions about slum life and slum people.

“What about the people of Mechanicsville?” asked Dan Brand, director of the Sum-Mec Neighborhood Service Center, 65 Georgia Ave., S.E., one of 14 centers operated by Economic Opportunity Atlanta (EOA).

“If a man makes $40 to $50 a week to feed a family of four it is not enough because of the extravagant rents. He deserts his family so his family can get welfare. He sends money back to aid the family, but if he’s caught the family loses everything.”

“Take the old couple who live in a house near Atlanta Stadium. She receives $52 a month from Social Security. He is unable to work and not eligible to receive government assistance.”

“Their rent is $43 a month, leaving them $9 for food. They have no heat, water or lights. We found out about them because we took they to Grady Hospital.”

“We get $350 a year in emergency funds to be handled on a loan basis,” Brand said. “Yet we get 30 to 50 people a day who are in critical need.”

However, the director said, this is not the whole story. “Many of the people are proud of their neighborhood and want to make it livable. The young people are making the best of a bad situation. They go to school hungry, they work for their education, but they go.”

“There is concern for people that is not found in our suburban areas. These people help those who are evicted.”

“Granted there is a high crime rate, but ‘outside’ people who go through these areas are not harmed. We have local problems and the crime rate is within the community.”

“Last summer we had street dances for 22,000 people. There was not one arrest, not one incident. Yet when they have a social at some suburban high schools they have to have police cars,” Brand continued.

Brand was just one of many who talked during the day on the problems of poverty and the lack of hope.

In a series of brief talks in the morning, persons attending the Day of Awareness were challenged to move to help the people they would see. “We want you to feel tired and poor when you come back,” said Father James F. Scherer.

“The Day of Awareness shouldn’t focus on the poor, it is needed among the rich,” said Jim Parham, executive administrator of EOA. “The rich are just as alienated as the poor in some cases...”

“Think what it’s like to be really hungry, how it feels to be on welfare, to ask the landlord for more time on the rent and he says ‘No,’ to apply for a job and not be able to read the application, to beg for free school lunches, to turn down a date because you are ashamed of your clothes.”

Sister Mary Rose of Emmaus House said, “Most of us here will go away unchanged. To be aware is one thing. To be involved is another. If this day is the end of your concern, then it is wasted.”

“The youth of America are saying ‘We can’t accept your excuses about barriers to opportunity,’” commented John W. Cox of the Atlanta Youth Council. “We are tired of this lack of opportunity because we are black or Puerto Rican or Appalachian white. You must help us now. We want a part of America now and we are going to have it.”

DeKalb Juvenile Judge Curtis Tillman told the audience to become involved with crime and poverty problems. “What do you do with a 14-year-old who stole shoes because he had none?”

The judge said, “Another message youth is giving us is disturbing. One boy out of six will appear in juvenile court. One out of three arrests will be a person under 21.”

Mrs. Helen Howard, director of the Vine City Foundation, said, “The lack of resources binds poor people. Why don’t you pass laws that will really help people on welfare? If the husband doesn’t make enough money, he should be helped...”

“I went to Washington on the Poor People’s Campaign with poor whites and blacks. Boy, did we mistrust each other at the beginning, but we later found out that welfare didn’t care what color you were, you still didn’t get enough.”

“I’ve been telling the poor whites to join the poor blacks. I told the poor whites that they’ve been used too long.”

Father Alan Dillman, pastor of Our Lady of Lourdes, said, “I am pastor of a parish that is an indictment of the Church which has stayed with the status quo...The Church has not challenged society, it has accepted it, and long ago we should have raised our voices in protest. I feel inadequate. I come from middle-class, white people and my training included little awareness of these problems.”

Mrs. Sue Crank, an EOA official, said the agency seeks to serve people where they are and recognizes talent in the neighborhood. It operates 14 centers, youth corps, men’s jobs corps, head start, legal aid, planned parenthood.

After the tours, participants heard talks by the Rev. Ed Grider, director of Urban Training Organizations, and the Rev. William Holmes Borders, pastor of Wheat Street Baptist Church.

“In 10 years, 70,000 persons in Atlanta have been displaced by bulldozers. The mayor says we have 17,000 dwellings that need to go, but where do the people go? It’s no wonder that areas near highways and urban renewal often boil over,” Grider commented.

“We have become preoccupied with symptoms. We think a band aid will heal the wounds. The problem is not poor people or black people. The problem is with all of us who try to escape from the realities of modern urban living.”

Borders said, “No person ever chose the race into which he was born. The color of a man’s skin is nothing to strut about. Jesus looked across and called men his brothers and looked to heaven to say father.”

“We are going to live together as brothers, or die as rats. You don’t know what it’s like to be a slum dweller unless you have lived with them a long time.”

“Some white people in Atlanta have never been to the slums. I’m telling you these slums will eat us up if we don’t resurrect them.”

The well-known pastor said man is basically the same. “For every genius in one race, there is a genius in another race. For every imbecile in one race, there is an imbecile in the other race.”

“Those who seem to be ahead because of education or economics are not superior because under the same circumstances others would be at the same place.”

“It doesn’t matter if you are black or white, if your skull is empty, you’re a fool,” he commented.