When parishioners at Holy Name of Jesus Catholic Church started filing into early morning Mass on Tuesday, they had reason to feel anxious. Many had been unable to contact friends and relatives in Gulf Coast areas devastated by Hurricane Katrina.
"One ailing and aged parishioner asked that we pray for an aunt Martha in Louisiana," said Father Paul Spellman, whose Los Angeles church of 1,100 families is 80% African American. "Others feared for the safety of children who had just arrived in New Orleans to start college."
California has been drawing African Americans from the South since the 1940s, when thousands flocked to Los Angeles and the Bay Area seeking manufacturing and defense industry jobs.
But in recent years, it has become one of the top states from which people are migrating back to the South.
Holy Name was among dozens of predominantly African American churches and social organizations in Southern California mobilizing Tuesday to channel assistance to the stricken region.
The Church of the Transfiguration in Los Angeles' Crenshaw district plans to sponsor a collection for storm victims Sunday.
John J. Hunter, pastor of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church said, "A number of our members have relatives whose roots are in that neck of the woods." Since Sunday, the church has collected $10,000, which will soon be forwarded to churches and community organizations in neighborhoods ripped apart by the hurricane.
Meanwhile, many Southland families were desperately trying to arrange transportation and accommodations for relatives left homeless by the storm.
Janet Peaks of Ladera Heights was preparing to take in a 79-year-old uncle whose home just east of New Orleans was destroyed by flooding.
"I put the word out to all my relatives in that area: You're welcome here," she said. "We're family, and families step up."
Joe Rouzan, former chief of staff for Los Angeles City Councilman Bernard C. Parks, said he and his wife hoped to shelter three or four relatives. "That is," he said, "if they can find a way to get out of New Orleans and out to California."
Among others personally touched by the disaster was Danny Bakewell, executive publisher and chief executive of the Los Angeles Sentinel, the West Coast's oldest black-owned newspaper, and head of the Brotherhood Crusade.
"I can't find my mother," Bakewell said Tuesday. "Nor can I find anyone who could give me a status report on her. I can't even fly there to look for her, because New Orleans is a no-fly zone right now."
