‘We must continue to be a servant on this block in the hope that it will serve the future.’
African Americans, worried about their children, began to leave the inner city for outlying suburbs in the Antelope Valley and the Inland Empire. They sold their homes to new arrivals from Mexico and Central America.
The cycle was familiar. “Whether you’re from Mississippi or Oaxaca, this is where immigrants come because this is the cheapest housing in the city,” said Daniel Walker, curator of the gospel music history archive at USC. “This is where you will congregate to begin your L.A. journey.”
After the fire, Jenkins resolved not to compromise the message or legacy of Victory Baptist Church.
The present age didn’t need churches to drop “Baptist” from their name in an effort to draw more members, as some have done.
He understood the challenge of raising money, but Victory Baptist Church would not become “a GoFundMe church,” he said. “When I came to Victory, it was proud not pompous, proud that we helped others but never took help ourselves.”
On a cold Friday morning in December, about a dozen members of the congregation arranged tables for the weekly food giveaway in the parking lot beside the darkened ruin of the church.
Roosevelt Hicks, 89, who has been coming to Victory since 1955, was there, as was Johnnie Pearl Knox, 91, who has put in 39 years with the food ministry. They could recall the days when there were three services on Sunday and all the pews were filled, when baptisms outnumbered funerals.
On this day, they helped fill boxes with grapes, walnuts, pinto beans, tomato sauce, potatoes, jelly and rice cakes, provided by the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank.
By 7:30 a.m., cars started to pull up. Mothers with children in the back opened doors, popped trunks and filled out registration forms.
Most spoke Spanish, limiting exchanges to pantomimes of gratitude and gracias.
“There are a lot of hungry families out there,” said Joanette Woods, 66, as she thumbed through the forms. By the end, she counted nearly 80 cars and 40 walk-ins, a typical Friday.
Next door, mothers with preschool children were starting their day at the South Central Los Angeles Ministry Project. The nonprofit, known as LAMP, was founded by Catholic nuns and offers classes in early childhood education, parenting and English language skills.
LAMP leases a building and outdoor space from the church, whose foundation sponsors a five-week summer camp for children.
“We’re not a Black or brown community but a community that struggles,” said LAMP’s executive director, Diana Pinto, when describing the challenges of this low-income neighborhood where the lessons of the past are just as relevant today.
In January, young women from LAMP learned King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, which they once recited in the sanctuary of the church where King himself had stood.
After mastering his syntax and language (“... the jangling discords of our nation to a beautiful symphony of brotherhood”), they would sing “We Shall Overcome.”
Nosotros venceremos … Oh, en mi corazón, yo creo
nosotros venceremos.
Whenever Jenkins questions the direction of his life, he relaxes his doubts, knowing that God directs the journey.
A graduate with a doctorate in ministry from the Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, he is now talking with contractors, studying possible designs for the new church and overseeing the renovation of a building down the street that will soon serve as a temporary sanctuary.
Until then, services are prerecorded and posted on the church’s YouTube channel, a throwback to when the church’s Voices of Victory choir televised their sounds of praise on KTTV.
While Aretha Franklin sung of God’s grace at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in 1972, four miles away Victory Baptist Church was making its own joyful noise with Preston, who went on to play with the Beatles, and with gospel superstars like Dorothy Maynor, the Clara Ward Singers and Ethel Waters.
Jenkins, who was a DJ in college (“Soul on Sundays”), and Jahi hold onto that legacy, and on a Wednesday night in mid-January, the church’s Inspirational Choir gathered at the neighboring Greater New Unity Baptist Church.
Its pastor, Randy Allison, was at the piano, Jahi at the organ and the choir was seated in the loft.
After practicing, Jahi turned on the video recorder and returned to the organ where he delivered the broad opening notes. Allison provided the counterpoint, and the singers followed with harmonies rising, each anchored by the refrain.
I’m reaping the harvest God promised me Take back what the devil stole from me.
Sitting quietly in a pew, Jenkins leaned forward, tapping his Nikes to the melody.
Jahi had selected the song — “Faithful Is Our God” by Hezekiah Walker — because its message: asking the Lord to restore what has been lost.
A 23-year-old law student at USC, Jahi doesn’t plan to follow his father into the ministry, but he understands what’s at stake in rebuilding.
“The Black church has been instrumental in my life,” he said. “It is where I have come to know God and have a relationship with him, learned about my Blackness and the Black community and embrace what it means to be African American.
“That is the historical role of the Black church in the Black community,” he said.
The singers’ voices rose and filled the sanctuary, words and music giving way to the emotional power of the hymn.
Take back what the devil stole from me.
After weeks of rain, on a bright and clear Tuesday morning in February, the excavator arrived. The lumbering machine rolled off a flatbed truck and positioned itself to begin clearing splintered sheets of plywood, charred beams, mangled sheets of metal, twisted girders, chicken wire and slabs of plaster.
Crews, dressed in white hazmat suits and equipped with respirators, began watering down the debris. The site had been screened with opaque plastic sheeting, its perimeter lined with red caution tape.
Less than a week into their work, the baby grand piano in the basement had been uncovered, intact.
Standing on the edge of the pit, the foreman circled his index finger in the air to signal the excavator operator to begin lifting this unlikely survivor of the fire. Jenkins and Jahi watched from a distance.
Dangling from the excavator’s claw, the piano slowly appeared above the wreckage. Painted yellow, it seemed all the more delicate and incongruous amid the heaps of waste and ruin.
Once it was on the ground, members of the crew rolled the instrument toward the pastor and his son. They opened the fall board revealing its black and white keys, flecked with caked ash.
Jahi struck middle C. It didn’t move. Then he tried a chord. Silence.
Between the heat of the fire, water from the hoses and exposure to the elements, the keyboard had swollen and warped, its keys fused together.
Jenkins thanked the crew, and he and Jahi walked away. Having lost so much already, they were hardly fazed.
Victory Baptist will find its future, Jenkins knew. He was merely the shepherd.