Photo caption: The aftermath of the EF-4 tornado in Rolling Fork, Mississippi (credit: Gofundme)
Reverend Hosea J. Hines, pastor of the Christ Tabernacle Church in Jackson, Mississippi, has launched a GoFundMe account to help several Black cities where most of the homes and cars were literally blown away by an EF-4 tornado that left 26 dead and 2,500 Mississippi residents in several mostly Black towns homeless.
His church has adopted the cities of Rolling Fork and Silver City, Mississippi.
Silver City has about 250 people who Reverend Hines said were mostly wiped out by the tornadoes. “We’ve adopted both cities to help them get back on their feet,” he said.
Referring to Rolling Fork, Hines said, “They got 85 percent wiped out,” by the EF-4 rated tornado where wind gusts reached 170 miles per hour and created a funnel three-fourths of a mile wide. He said homes and some trailers were literally blown away, leaving piles of sticks and bricks 20 feet high, along with a trail of destruction and death.
Silver City’s population of 250 people was 95 percent wiped out. “Our goal is to help them get back on their feet,” Hines said.
The national leader of A New Day Coalition for Equity for Black America (ANCEBA), Pastor Hines contacted the Chicago Crusader to help him reach the Chicagoland African American clergy with his GoFundMe fundraising to aid the displaced Mississippi residents.
He expanded his outreach to other hard hit mostly Black cities, including Indianola, Vicksburg and Yazoo, Mississippi. He is trying to raise funds to buy gift cards displaced residents need to help pay for medicine because drug stores are no longer there, and for the hotel bills they are forced to rack up in order to have a place to live.
Hines’ goal is to raise $25,000 or more to help displaced Mississippi residents he says are “homeless but not hopeless.”
His church will provide food for three consecutive Saturdays for residents living in Rolling Fork beginning on Saturday, April 1. “We will have different ministries feeding the people there.”
Volunteers from Hines’ church took a trailer to Rolling Fork April 1, full of cleaning supplies, plastic gloves and hand sanitizer. He vowed to take a larger shipment to those cities in the near future.
According to Hines, there are a couple of churches that were not destroyed and have been labeled distribution sites, but in other places he said tents have been erected because of the near total destruction of homes.
“It’s very difficult for 18-wheelers to maneuver through the debris and downed wires,” Hines explained. “They got to clear up the debris, which is about 20 feet high.”
On Sunday, March 26, Hines said he and three deacons and other staff went to Rolling Fork and saw a lot of holes, homes thrown off their foundations. “It was a very sad situation,” he said.
“I want to thank you in advance for anything you can send us so that we can help those people whose homes and cars are gone. It is shocking to visit these two cities knowing what they looked like just a few days ago but now are just piles of wood and brick,” Hines said.
To donate to these two Mississippi towns, Hines asks that you donate on his website, anceba.org, then scroll down to the Disaster Relief-Rolling Fork and Silver City picture, and click on “donate now.”
