Mennonite Central Committee News Service
March 13, 1964
MENNONITE CENTRAL COMMITTEE SENDS TRUCKLOAD
WITH 4 1/2 TONS FOOD AND CLOTHING TO MISSISSIPPI DELTA
Akron, Pa. (MCC)--Early Wednesday
morning, March 11, a truck carrying 4 1/2 tons of food and clothing
left Akron, Pa., on a 1000 mile, two-day journey to aid 120 families
in the Mississippi Delta.
The Mennonite Central Committee arranged
for the truckage following reports on the Delta situation from
Yern Preheim, General Conference Board of Christian Service,
Newton, Kansas, and Titus Bender, pastor, Fellowship Mennonite
Church, Meridian, Miss. Preheim and Bender investigated the Delta
area February 27-29. They informed MCC, Akron, that 100 families
at Itta Benna and 20 families at Cleveland, Miss., were in critical
straits, requiring food and clothing immediately. These two towns
are located roughly 150 miles north of Jackson, Miss.
The truck carried a load of 3,467
pairs of children's shoes, 38 bales of children's clothes, 1,500
pounds of meat, 460 pounds of vegetable soup, 400 pounds of flour,
400 pounds of lard, and 100 pounds of dried apples. These goods
are valued at $8,500.
Three members of the Bart Mennonite
Church, Bart, Pa., drove the truck to Mississippi and assisted
with the distributions on Friday and Saturday, March 13 aud 14.
The men are Titus Kauffman, pastor, and the brothers Leroy and
Paul Beiler, farmer and lumberman, respectively. The truck was
furnished by Glick's Plant Farm, Smoketown, Pa. The Bart Mennonite
Church and the Greenwood Mennonite Church, Greenwood, Del., are
sharing the trip expenses of approximately $400.
Titus Bender's congregation at Meridian,
Miss., is about 300 miles from Cleveland. They are assuming responsibility
for the distributions. This church, and the Choctaw Indian Mission,
are the Mennonite churches nearest the Delta area. The Bart,
Greenwood, and Meridian Mennonite churches all belong to the
Conservative Mennonite Conference.
Preheim and Bender reported that
many of the children were unable to attend school because they
lacked shoes and clothes. Therefore, at the semi-annual meeting
of the Associated Sewing Circles of the Laucaster Conference
on Saturday, March 7, Mrs. Susie Rutt of the Ephrata MCC clothing
center, requested shoes for Mississippi Delta children.
Each sewing group belonging to the
Associated Sewing Circles has a contact sister in each of the
member congregations. These women quickly relayed the appeal
and by Monday morning, March 9, shoes began to pour into the
Ephrata clothing center.
Within four days, 3,788 pairs of
new and used shoes were contributed by 60 congregations. Well
over half the shoes were new. Mrs. Rutt says that in her fifteen
years at the MCC center she has never before seen anything like
this response.
Also on Monday, March 9, a volunteer
group of fifteen men and women from Mennonite churches in Hagerstown,
Maryland, answered a special call and came 100 miles to sort
and pack the shoes. The next day, 29 men and women from the Mt.
Joy, Pa., Brethren in Christ church, came to prepare the shoes
for shipment in bags.
The problem in the Mississippi Delta
is both racial discrimination and economic difficulty due to
automation. Each winter the situation deteriorates further as
more men are displaced by machines in the cotton fields. Even
those who manage to obtain seasonal work on the plantations can
earn only approximately $500, which is insufficient for the whole
year. It is estimated that it takes $4,000 annually to place
the multi- person family above poverty in the present American
context.
Unemployment in the Delta is extremely
high but those who suffer most are Negroes trying to register
and vote. As voter registration drives increase, state welfare
is cut back or eliminated to keep Negroes from registering.
Responsibility for these people would
usually be in the hands of the state and national welfare agencies
but the Negroes cannot look to state or civic officials for help
because Mississippi segregationists fear the voting power the
Negroes may soon have. They hope to pressure the Negroes, who
comprise over 60 per cent of the population in the Delta, to
leave the state. Because the federal government employs a policy
of giving over a lot of local control, the local government then
proceeds to thwart the intent of the federal government.
Obviously, emergency help is not
the answer to the long-term economic problem in Mississippi,
but it is a necessity right now. The rural Delta area is extremely
poor and the most poverty-stricken of any area of comparable
size in the U.S. There is wealth there but it lies in the hands
of a few plantation owners.
Vincent Harding, Peace Section representative
in the South, visited the Mississippi Delta a year ago and has
since been in continual contact with this area.
MCC participated in a meeting of
church agencies at Memphis, Tennessee, in November, 1963, at
which long-range plans were laid to assist the Mississippi Delta
Negro communities through community development, citizen education,
and racial reconciliation.
Jesse Morris, Negro agricultural
economist, reporting to the National Council of Churches on the
Mississippi Delta situation says: "In a country that prides
itself on being the agricultural giant of the world and has irrefutable
evidence of the fact in the form of billions of dollars worth
of stored surplus commodities, the fact that there are persons
living in the Delta whose dietary levels are substandard is not
only a national disgrace but a national crime."
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