For Black History Month, Forgotten Harvest wants to spend some time celebrating a few of our Black-led partnerships that work to sustain and improve our Metro Detroit communities.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Task Force, Inc.

Every year for the past forty (40) years, the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Task Force, Inc. has attracted large crowds to its annual Peace Walk and Program to commemorate Dr. King’s legacy. This tradition was started by Barbara Talley while she was a member of the Southfield City Council. Talley was the first African American elected to Southfield City Council in 1983. She is fondly known as the “Mother of Southfield Civil Rights.” Talley served on Council for six years until 1989. The Peace Walk and Program was a result of Talley’s desire to hold an event that would be unforgettable once a national holiday was enacted into law.

Southfield was the first city in the state of Michigan to hold a Dr. King peace walk or march. The first Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Peace Walk took place on January 20, 1985, commemorating the first national observance of Dr. King’s birthday. The walk continues to grow in size and scope each year, with year-long educational and community outreach activities.

“We work throughout the year to provide a Peace Walk and Program the third January of each year,” according to Faira Glenn, President of the Task Force. “We also work throughout the year and provide youth programs. We honor youth each year for their community service. This year we were pleased to recognize 40 students,” Glenn added.

“We meet the second Thursday of each month to plan activities of the Task Force,” Dorothy Dean stated. “I plan the activities of the Peace Walk. We have walked from Hope United Methodist Church for the last forty years,” Dean stated. “Our Peace Walk remains the larges walk in the State of Michigan, attracting thousands, old and young from all walks of life. Even in the coldest of weather, we have faithful walkers who dress in layers and help to continue the legacy of Dr. King.”

“For the past three consecutive years, we have partnered with Forgotten Harvest to provide food to the community,” according to Ida Cunningham, who is the chair of the Food Giveaway. “During the pandemic, we started the tradition of a food giveaway as we saw the community in need. We have kept this tradition and get a good response,” Cunningham noted.

“The power of the legacy of Dr. King has continued and we have a good team of workers

who volunteer to make the events successful, ” Glenn added. “Black History month is a good time to reflect on the works of Dr. King as we continue to strive for equality and inclusion in this

Ever changing world. We plan to continue to recognize the good work of Dr. King.”

The Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Task Force, Inc. is an all-volunteer grassroots civic organization. Its mission and purpose is to celebrate the life and works of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and to accept the challenges to work to make real the promise of America as a land of freedom, equality, opportunity, and brotherhood, and to commit to plan observances to remind us of his philosophy of non-violent actions for creating positive social change. The organization is a civic and advocacy organization guided by the works of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to facilitate social change, the education of our youth and to promote justice.

For general information, visit our website at www.mlktaskforcemi.org.

God’s Storehouse

Next Black History Month Feature: God’s Storehouse

“If we can give them some food and some clothes and some love and we’re able to talk to them, it’s going to help them move forward. That’s what it’s all about.”

God’s Storehouse is a Detroit Ministry led by Pastor Toni-Brooke Brown. Their work is focused on serving their community of people with genuine care and a desire to help them move through and beyond whatever causes their struggles.

In its beginning, God’s Storehouse was a family ministry formed by Pastor Brown and her mother. The pair felt called to service and would spend cold nights driving around their community seeking out homeless individuals to offer them blankets, homemade sandwiches, a listening ear, and an open heart.

Eventually, more of their family got involved and they moved into a building to work at a larger scale, providing groceries, hot meals, clothing, hygiene kits, sponsoring children for holidays, and even offering rent and utility payment assistance to prevent evictions or power shut-offs.

Pastor Brown told us, “It started off just seeing needs and trying to meet those immediate needs but now as we’ve gone through the years, the goal is those that are able to move forward or maybe they’re just going through a crisis and need just a hand to help them up to get back in position or get a new job or find housing or whatever the case may be depending on the people or their circumstances. We try to minister to the whole person so that there’s change.”

Forgotten Harvest has been partnering with God’s Storehouse for more than 20 years, providing the food they offer as a jumping point to other avenues of service. “Forgotten Harvest has been a huge part of us being able to build relationships with individuals,” Pastor Brown said. “It’s really what keeps us going because I want to say probably 90% of our food comes from Forgotten Harvest and it has kept us in connection with the community and even outside our community where we deliver.”

After receiving an Agency Capacity Grant from Forgotten Harvest, God’s Storehouse purchased a large transit van for food and emergency goods delivery. “Now we’re more effectively and efficiently able to serve people in a way that makes people feel like…the comments that we get back is, ‘You all make us feel human and seen.’ And when we use that food truck and we can communicate with them better, we’re not just reaching outside the back door trying to hand them a bag but we’re able to talk to them and we’re able to service them with more dignity.”

The work God’s Storehouse does is about building trust and relationship with those who need help and, “Not just see the outward that there’s someone who needs something from you, but see them as someone, as a person that matters,” Pastor Brown said.

And it’s impacting generations. The populations of people God’s Storehouse serves include individuals, families with children, the elderly, those with disabilities, those bound with addiction, and anyone else they come in contact with.

Pastor Brown said, “There are generational things that happen. With our ministry, our focus is how can we walk this person through and help them to get real change from all the pain they’ve gone through, all the mistrust, the trouble they may have gotten into, the prison record that’s chasing them around that they feel like they can’t do anything. We’ve learned and are still learning how to help people on a one-by-one basis depending on what it is that their circumstances are. But this is for people to be encouraged and to build and to change and then it changes families, it changes households, it changes the next generation, and that is our goal.”

God’s Storehouse is making change in our community by seeing and caring for the whole person. “We care more about the people as a whole and the community that we’re able to serve whether they’re Black or White or Chaldean or whatever it is. We thank God that building relationships and being able to give those basic needs helps people to move forward and to be encouraged and to be strengthened and to know that they matter and that there is hope and they can change and they can move forward and their situation can be turned around.”

A pillar of belief at Forgotten Harvest is that it takes a community to support a community and our incredible partners like God’s Storehouse often lead the way.

City Covenant Church

Kicking off our Black History Month mini-series is City Covenant Church of Detroit’s Brightmoor neighborhood led by Pastor Semmeal Thomas and his family. This church and its community center across the street, Mission: City, have been serving the Brightmoor area and partnering with Forgotten Harvest for a little more than 20 years with the mission of “Helping create a community of independence one street, one family, one person at a time.”

Those seeking assistance from City Covenant do not need to be religious or spiritual to receive food or their other supportive offerings. Pastor Thomas told us, “We serve anybody. You don’t have to read the Scripture, you don’t have to go to the church, we serve anybody.”

“People come to the pantry at the church for food, and then we can build up trust and a relationship with people to open a conversation about their needs. I can send them over to Mission: City, our community center, and we can help them with resume skills or we could help them develop their business or we do tutoring or mentoring for children. We do programs over there that try to come alongside the major challenges we’re facing in underserved communities like Brightmoor and Detroit as a whole. And the flipside is, some people come out to the community center and then I’m able to ask them about their spiritual life, after building up credibility and trust.”

The City Covenant Church team partners with our tri-county-focused organization Forgotten Harvest, but keeps their operations intimately tied to their neighborhood to focus on caring for the families that come to them for support.

Pastor Thomas said, “We’re very intentional about remaining intimate. I want to target the 200 or so families within our community who we have relationships with and we can help them get to the point where they don’t need Forgotten Harvest. I have a saying that we’re in the business of putting ourselves out of business.”

And their work has been guided in part by Black History and Legacy, both in general and specifically in the city of Detroit. Born in Detroit in 1960, Pastor Thomas grew up in communities that knew systemic segregation and neglect.

He told us, “When I was a child, the most relevant thing in the community was either the church or the schools, just about everything came through either the church or the schools. So, when Black people couldn’t go to the bank to borrow money, they could come to the church. When Black people were in need of food or different social services, and they didn’t have healthcare or they didn’t have this or that, they came to the church.”

He went on, “It is no longer the thing in the community, and that’s okay, but for me, I wanted to make sure that same legacy that our ancestors left us that had this spiritual component was still relevant in our communities. The church should be this place of empowerment.” Citing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Pastor Thomas talked about City Covenant’s calling to extend their support to all walks of life, knowing there isn’t just one group of people affected by food insecurity and other socioeconomic issues.

Partnering with Forgotten Harvest allows them to offer that support at a significant scale, serving around 30,000 to 40,000 meals each year, without getting bogged down by the logistics of large-scale food sourcing.

“I don’t feel the need to save the world, but from an African American standpoint and the legacy, we were known for community. And the most communal thing you can do is eat. Forgotten Harvest helps us set the table. It allows us to provide a service to the community and then allows me to build some trust with them” to offer aid in other ways too, Pastor Thomas said.

The work City Covenant Church does in the Brightmoor community ripples out into the entire Metro Detroit area, expanding the care available to each of us as more of our neighbors receive needed support. Pastor Thomas and his family are glowing examples of community aid and connection, and they share their work to inspire others to get involved.

“If there was anything I want people to know, it’s that they can do it too. I don’t have a million-dollar budget. Empowerment—it can be scaled,” he shared. “There’s this concept that bigger is better, and another one of my sayings is, no, better is better.”

Every act of community care, no matter its size, lifts our collective. Forgotten Harvest is proud to partner with City Covenant Church and all our partners who understand we’re in this together and extend their support to empower our neighbors.