News Showcase

Editor's note: Anniston Star reporter Nick Cenegy, area resident Gary Mason and the Rev. Frederick Durant recently visited several of Anniston's housing communities. Mason and Durant are involved in Stop the Violence, a community-based effort to curb crime in Anniston. Today is Part 1 of a two-part series about what they heard from residents.

Crime in Anniston has sprung forth this year like an aggressive weed.

The city has seen 10 homicides in the first four months of the year — more than all of last year. That's not counting a fatal shooting in Hobson City or several other area shootings that were not fatal.

Those who ran these streets years ago say the roots of what is costing lives today have been growing beneath the surface for nearly a decade.

Among them are Gary Mason and the Rev. Frederick Durant. The men, now in their 40s, have joined others in a grassroots effort to stem the violence, to pave a new road forward.

The men spent their formative years in places many consider to be crime "hot spots." They ate the free lunches, played community sports and said they — somewhat inevitably — deviated from the good road. But both returned.

Driving around those same streets now, they see the poverty, discontent, fear, lack of opportunity, and idleness that are the exposed roots of crime in their community. They worry that there are deeper roots, grafted with drugs and lack of education, still growing below the surface.

Caring for the community

On a clear day in the red-brick world of Glen Addie Homes, there is no shortage of life. Though it is tucked up against forested hills and blocked in by railroad tracks and the Alabama 202 overpass, the government-subsidized housing is no less active because of its geographic isolation.

Recently, two men stood in front of the barred window of a convenience store — one 24 years old, the other 25. They wore short plaid pants that rode below their waists and hung just shy of their ankles. Both had on clean white T-shirts, socks and dark-colored corduroy bedroom slippers.

Mason said they are known drug slingers — dealers — and they were not anxious to give their names.

"Kids look at people standing by the store and don't know anything else," said the 25-year-old. "All they have to do from when they wake up to when they go to sleep is look at what's around them."

The young man told Mason he hadn't been involved with youth leagues or sports when he was growing up, but he believes those things motivate kids.

"They don't need to just be walking around. They need to be doing something," he said, the 24-year-old nodding in agreement. "Those kids don't need to be looking up to us."

Mason told the men he and Durant are working to bring more programs and church groups to the community.

"Once we get this rolling, we are going to need your help," Mason said.

The two men offered to help pass out flyers.

"We got your back," said the 25-year-old.

In front of an adjacent building, several women in their late teens and early 20s sat on a concrete step.

Durant approached them and asked if they work, go to school, and attend church.

Most do some combination of all those things, but they add that it's tough without day care for their children.

They recall a more active time in Glen Addie, when there was a program called the Youth Council, which sponsored sports and took children on trips during the summer so they could experience life outside the confinement of the housing community. There was also free lunch Mondays through Fridays.

Several had heard stories – passed down like tall tales – of the late Rev. John Nettles showing up in the projects to knock on doors, and, if the kids were working on homework, he would pay them money as part of a program called "Project Pay."

Those programs don't exist anymore, or if they do, the young people don't know about them, the women said.

"Sometimes we look at this place and wonder if it is designed to be this way," Mason said. "They are not coming out of here."

A man in his 20s, leaning against a car parked a few feet from the front steps, stated simply, "It ain't going to get better; it's going to get worse."

The park perception

On a sunny day in the middle of Anniston schools' spring break, the Glen Addie Community Center's doors were locked with a note on the window glass announcing activities going on at McClellan.

Mason and Durant recoil.

"I can't remember the last time these doors were closed during spring break," Mason said.

Consolidation of Anniston city parks over the years was meant to pay for the Woodland Park Softball Complex and the fields at McClellan as a way to stimulate revenue for the whole city. But in the process, some local resources were moved out of walking distance.

City Parks and Recreation Department Director Steven Folks said the complex at McClellan belongs to the entire Anniston community.

"All kids should be able to utilize the nice facilities," he said, adding that there are benefits to having a diverse group of kids playing sports at McClellan. "If a kid wants to get out there, we'll get them out there."

Some feel the move to McClellan put sports out of reach.

As West 15th Street businessman General Jackson puts it, "Kids on a day like today would be out practicing for games. It would be 12th Street against Norwood, or Norwood versus Hobson City."

In the late 1980s, there was pee-wee football, baseball, and every area had a community center and a park, he said.

There is no longer baseball at the park near Norwood Homes, or Ezell Park, and even a park formerly tended by a church near 12th Street is overgrown, Jackson said.

"They've been moved to McClellan, where the average little Johnny can't get to it," he said.

Mason added, "How many parents here feel safe letting their kids go off on a bus by themselves to McClellan?"

Kids can no longer walk to the parks, so now they just sit, Durant said.

There are other options, however. The Glen Addie community center is still open and as active as ever, Folks said.

He said since he took office in March 2007, he has been working to put more programs in place. The center recently completed some renovations, and the director is aggressively running programs.

The city's community centers already sponsor a variety of events, educational programs, tutoring and computer labs.

Folks' guiding vision is to transform the community centers into "safe havens" that children could use as a sort of neutral ground. They can come to the centers to find mentors and resources, because it takes more than sports to be successful, he said.

"Yes, there are a lot of athletes in the area," said Folks, "but like my mother told me when I was young, 'I don't raise athletes, I raise men.'"

The Parks and Recreation Department is working to start Boy Scout troops and other programs, hosting block parties and a youth soccer league, renovating Carver Center as well as Hodges and Nettles parks.

All of these are efforts to gnaw at the roots of violence, he said.

But these are seeds just planted, and the fruit may not be seen for some time.

Many on the PARD staff saw 10 years ago the issues they face today — a disconnect between the community and their children, he said.

"We've got new ideas, energetic recreation leaders and renovations to the centers," Folks said. "You ain't seen nothing yet."

Where the heart is

West 15th Street is the heartwood of this community. It is where the roots converge, to make a common stage where the dramas of the community play out.

It is a place where Durant and Mason find old friends and ready conversations.

One such old friend is Warren "Sam" Phillips.

He ushers the two men casually away from the group hanging out in the protection of a front porch because they are "doing what they do."

Phillips, 42, is back visiting from Cincinnati, but he grew up here.

"I ain't never been afraid here; now I'm scared," he said. "It ain't in my heart like that, but that's the way it is. It's done changed."

He does his best to be indoors by 7:30 or 8 every night because he's not comfortable unless he can see what's going on around him, he said.

"Call me what you want to call me, but I got to be safe," Phillips said. "When it gets deep, man, [I say], 'I love you, but I gotta go.'"

Mason said that when the three men were young, they played football and baseball together every summer and that Phillips would always break his arm.

"He would always cut the cast off himself," said Mason. Since then, Phillips has been shot and stabbed, he said.

Yet, the up-and-coming generation makes the older men nervous, Phillips said.

"It ain't like we used to do, snorting or smoking stuff," he said.

The young kids mix pills and alcohol. They shoot faster, too. Much of the violence recently has been over petty disputes, Phillips said.

One man has a "beef" with another man and shoots him, then the dead man's friends retaliate, he said.

There is no sense of honor anymore, said Durant, who said he did drugs and ran the streets for 23 years. There is no adherence to the rules that govern life on the streets, he said.

It used to be that certain transgressions would yield certain retaliations, Durant said.

Moving in on another man's woman might provoke a beating; making a drug move in someone else's territory, something worse, he said.

Mason said the three men owe their lives to sports.

"We all deviated," he said. "But we had a foundation to go back to."

Part 2 looks at the role of churches in where the Anniston community is, and where it's going.