for me to do. Throughout this entire process, God laid it on my heart to pray for the cloak of humility. I did not understand it at the time why He wanted me to pray for this, but obedient I was and I prayed for the cloak of humility.
I arrived in Orlando, Florida, picked up my luggage, arranged for transportation and went to Headquarters where I found out that I would be working in Client Services and received my hotel assignment. I was staying at Disney World.Wwwwwooooo wwweeeeeeee!!! Disney World!!! I remember telling someone there,
this must be the calm
before the storm.
My first stop was Fort Lauderdale, I was there for three days, and the local Red Cross volunteers complained so much because they were not being used. While there, there was a driver who was going out into the neighborhoods to feed the people. He refused to serve blacks and told them he was not going to feed him and that if they wanted to eat, they would have to wait for the next driver to come out to feed them in a few hours. He was reported and nothing happened to him.
Off to Miami, I went to get another assignment. They next day I was sent out to West Palm Beach. We were informed that we would be going into an area that no one would go to at night, let alone during the day. The city was told Red Cross would not come unless they had the National Guard, the Sheriff’s department and the state police there to escort and protect those going down there. When we got there, my mouth dropped, we were in a black city!!!
I watched satan rear his ugly. Each day during our supervisor’s meetings, the managers seemed to come up with ways to not pay those in Pahokee and Belle Glades any money that had been allotted to them. They, the managers, would rush the white and Mexicans through the process and authorize us to give them benefits, but the black people, they would have them sit there all day and have them come back the next day, just to have them be denied. I spent a lot of time praying God’s will to be done. The residents in those two cities said they were used to that type of treatment by the Red Cross. I was not.
After calling the National headquarters in Washington D.C. repeatedly, we found out that four million dollars had been allotted to those two cities and officials were wondering why none of the money was being given to the residents. Boxes and boxes of files came up missing. A client reported that a tree fell on her roof and there were portions of the roof missing. The tree caused her wall to cave in, the limbs knocked out her windows, and she had severe mold and water damage. She was told by a Red Cross worker that her damage was minor and she would not receive any assistance. A few hours later, she was on the news and they showed a picture of her damaged house. Two hours later, a news crew was at the center and of course, the managers were nowhere to be found.
Case after case of this went on. There were complete mobile home parks destroyed and these residents were being denied, except for the white and Mexican residents. After many calls to Headquarters an investigation was started. In the meantime, the mayor got involved and had to come down to the center on a daily basis in order to get his people their assistance. The president of the local NAACP came down and witnessed the prejudice herself. What they did not know was that all of their actions were being reported to the governor, who came down and witnessed the racism for himself without them knowing and reported them to the internal investigations department at the Red Cross.