By Gretchen Keiser

“The deacons’ understanding of their mission and ministry should impel them individually and collectively to be more passionate in their defense of human rights and human dignity, more determined in their quest for racial justice and social equality, more enthusiastic in their support of religious and civic causes, more resolute in their attempts to establish genuine community...”

Bishop Howard Hubbard
Albany, N.Y.

The roots of Larry French’s new assignment as a permanent deacon go back over 10 years and spring from the very neighborhood where he and his wife, Barbara, a nurse, and their four children live.

A native of Chicago who did a tour in Vietnam and spent five years in the Army after graduating from the University of Toledo, Ohio, French had his own financial planning business and lived in the Flat Shoals area near South DeKalb Mall. After a Cursillo weekend, which sparked his Christianity, he jokingly recalls that he “got religion” and “began to have fun working around my church,” Sts. Peter and Paul in Decatur. By 1974, he’d been hired by the pastor, Father Henry Gracz, as a full-time lay worker, helping with parish organization and finances, among other things.

But then a dramatic change began to take place in French’s neighborhood and around Sts. Peter and Paul and the focus of his work narrowed with a burning intensity around a singularly unpopular cause: the support of integrated neighborhoods against all pressure.

As French recalls it, black families began to move into the predominantly white neighborhoods around the church. He alleges that realtors acted in discriminatory and unscrupulous fashion to “turn over the neighborhood,” not turning it into an integrated area, but by using fear and prejudice, turning it into a black neighborhood from which white families would flee.

“Why do they do that?” he asked rhetorically about the real estate firms. “Money. In the ‘70s we figured out, they would make $3 million in commissions by turning over the neighborhood. They generated for themselves additional millions in revenue and they are still doing it. They just have moved on to new neighborhoods.”

The term “block busting” does not refer to real estate people moving a black family in to a previously all white neighborhood, French said emphatically. “Block-busting is the practice of real estate people going into the neighborhood, spreading fear and gossip and lies about what is going to happen because blacks are moving in.”

As he saw what was happening in his neighborhood and parish, French went to his pastor and parish council. “I said, ‘This is terrible, this is the most unChristian thing going on anywhere. The church is moving en masse because we have black people moving in - Christian black people.’”

Moved by his plea, the parish council told French to work as the parish liaison in this area, releasing him from all other responsibilities. The fight was joined and “we started dealing with it,” he said.

Ten years may have passed, but the toughness of the fight is still apparent as he speaks. “We wrote all over the nation” looking for other neighborhoods that were in similar struggles, to share experiences, find out what the laws are, what’s effective.” Among the illegal actions, French said, is “steering,” where a realtor only brings one racial group to the neighborhood to view homes, steering others elsewhere. “My neighbor across the street collected 97 realtors cards” during the height of the intense pressure on the neighborhood, French recalled. “Ninety-seven realtors could not bring one white family to my neighborhood. That’s illegal.”

Joining together with an ecumenical coalition of churches who were fighting the block-busting -- Columbia Crossways -- two avenues of opposition emerged. One was to come up with a listing service for homes which bypassed realty firms and attempted to keep the homes open to all applicants, regardless of race. The second was to start a testing program, which would check up on realty firms to determine if they were steering particular people to the neighborhood and not showing available homes to everyone. The testing service was the seed which grew into the agency where French now works, Metro Fair Housing.

Their first office outside Sts. Peter and Paul Church was a trailer in South DeKalb Mall, French recalls, and to combat the out-of-the way location they were given, they painted the trailer pumpkin orange. The fight had its personal costs, as well. French, Father Gracz and others at Sts. Peter and Paul were sued for $4.5 million each in a suit by a realty firm that was later thrown out of court. Personal attacks on him grew so intense, French said, “I put in writing the threat to sue if it didn’t stop,” he said.

The second wave came when South DeKalb developed the highest foreclosure rate in the nation as families who had moved into the area began to be threatened with losing their homes. “They put people in these homes some of whom didn’t even know they were buying homes -- they thought they were renting,” he said. Metro Fair Housing began to work with families threatened with foreclosure and loss of their homes, and has been able to prevent foreclosure for over 1,000 families, French said.

Repeatedly, French calls himself a “struggling Christian,” but insists that it is necessary to struggle and not settle for less than the Gospel demands. In his own neighborhood, a coalition called the Flat Shoals Alliance has kept it a “beautiful neighborhood,” he says. “We were not successful in being able to stop realtors from steering, but we were successful in keeping neighborhood services up to par.”

“We debunked the big myth” that home values would decline, he said. “Our value stayed up, is up. Services are good. Schools are good.”

And at Sts. Peter and Paul parish, there is a balance of black and white families, because parishioners made the commitment to one another, French said. “Those people have really hung in there because of their Christian commitment, which is glorious.”

“We may lose yet, but by God we sure have given it one hell of a nice fight,” he said. “God doesn’t say you have to win. He does say you have to struggle.”

Metro Fair Housing has become the only fair housing agency in Georgia, funded by some city and county money and by foundations and membership pledges. Four full-time and several part-time people help families threatened with foreclosure and combat, through a testing program, discriminatory practices in renting and selling homes throughout Metropolitan Atlanta and into Cobb, Gwinnett and Cherokee counties.

French, who coordinates the testing program, trains and supervises a staff of largely volunteer testers, who follow up on complaints of discrimination. The complaints, which may involve sex, ethnic or religious discrimination, in addition to racial discrimination, are so numerous that Metro Fair Housing cannot keep up with them all, French said. The agency has developed a strong testing program, using two independent parties who visits the apartment house or realtor where discrimination is suspected. The testers never see one another’s reports, French said, but he compares the two and determines whether discrimination is involved.

“We know what we’re doing,” he said. “We don’t want to hurt the innocent. We try to retrain the guilty. We try to teach how not to discriminate in the future. It’s very simple -- treat everybody the same.”

But he is also realist about methods that work. “The only way to stop the discrimination is to hurt the discriminator in the pocketbook. It is bound to get their attention,” he says. “Pleading to their morality has not worked. Voluntary compliance has not worked.”

In addition, French spends part of his time promoting the Fund for an OPEN Society, which provides lower interest loans to families who are willing to make “pro-integration moves” into neighborhoods. OPEN also sells thousand dollar investment notes to people “willing to make socially conscious investments, which is what an open mortgage is,” French said.

A permanent deacon for the last 2 1/2 years serving at Sts. Peter and Paul parish, French’s commitment in this area has just been formally recognized by his assignment as a deacon, under the direction of Father Jacob Bollmer, of Catholic Social Services, to work for the advancement of integrated housing.

The customary work of a deacon may be to preach at Mass and to work in the parish, but this assignment does not seem far afield to French.

Expressing his deep seated commitment as a “struggling Christian” to integrated housing, he says, “for me to just run out of my neighborhood to protect the value of my home is wrong.” It is not a Christian response to his neighbor, French says.

“When I say stuff like this,” he says, “I’m preaching as much as if I were in the pulpit on Sunday. Sometimes I win converts and sometimes I don’t. This is where the Church belongs, with the issues on the streets.”