INDIANAPOLIS — After the summons to worship, the Lord’s Prayer and the first hymn of the morning, the pastor of the South Calvary Missionary Baptist Churchhere asked the visitors to stand. Among the several hundred African-Americans in the pews on that Sunday last month, about a dozen elderly guests rose to introduce themselves as former neighbors, all of them Jewish.
“My name is Lee Mallah,” added another, “and I lived at 1015 Church Street.”
“My mother and father ran Terry’s Market,” said a third.
With each address, each detail, murmurs of recognition and sighs of “Amen” floated up from the worshipers. Then the pastor, the Rev. John W. Woodall Jr., called on a white-haired man with wire-rim glasses, a retired judge named William Levy.
“All my homes, unfortunately, are under that interstate,” Mr. Levy said, nodding in the direction of Interstate 70, two blocks north of the church. And now his listeners emitted a communal groan, the sound of lamentation.
Categories: Americas, Discrimination, Faith, Human Rights, United States