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Hope for the City
This is the story of Father Bill Cunningham, Eleanor Josaitis and others who were drawn to the mission of Focus Hope. It is a captivating retelling of an English teacher who wore a Roman collar, rode a Harley-Davidson and marched with Dr. King across the Edmund Pettus bridge, a suburban mother of five who organized marriage enrichment events before she persuaded her husband to move into Detroit, the 1967 riot that exposed systemic racial inequality and the civil rights organization that evolved.
454 pages, Paperback
Published November 16, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 5, 2018
Having lived in Detroit during the Cunningham era and familiar with Focus Hope, I found this well documented book very interesting. I had forgotten many of the mover and shakers names of the time.
January 10, 2017
This book introduced me to Father Bill Cunningham, a real "Vatican II priest" (and I mean that in both the positive and the less positive senses in which the term is used). Cunningham and his right-hand woman, Eleanor Josaitis, were the dynamic duo behind Focus:HOPE, which began as a small, grass-roots effort in Detroit to get government-provided food aid to needy mothers and children and grew into a complex organization that aims to overcome the effects of racism in a thousand concrete, positive ways.
Starting shortly after he witnessed a destructive and deadly riot in Motor City, the visionary priest and the practical, steady-thinking housewife (with an incredibly generous husband!) started organizing distribution of food aid. It wasn't too long before they also began putting together a series of educational and industrial projects that created "facts on the ground" to provide not just job training, but jobs--good, solid jobs in areas involving manufacturing and engineering so that families would not be dependent on uncertain (and diminishing) free government rations. They did it through a combination of fund-raising and grant-writing coupled with government and industry contracts (including work for GM and the Department of Defense). Cunningham answered critics like pacifist Bishop Thomas Gumbleton by saying that it was better for the DOD to put money toward training American workers than paying foreign factories to manufacture weapons, and that putting Americans to work was better than sending them off to war. (However, Cunningham's spun-off manufacturing company did manufacture weapons components.)
Recognizing that family needs led some of the parents in his program to quit their training and abandon the job prospects it offered, he launched a state of the art childcare and early education facility nearby. Parents could drop in to check on their children at any time. Cunningham worked with local, state and national politicians to achieve this and so many other projects, once commenting that it was easier for him to get grants from Republicans (who didn't know how to address social ills) than from Democrats (who thought they had the answers). As a sign of how bi-partisan his support was, Focus:HOPE received generous funding (and official visits) from Republican Vice-President George Bush and later from President Bill Clinton.
Cunningham was a post-Vatican II variety of what used to be called a "brick and mortar priest": a pastor who knew how to build--whether it was a church or school, or a high-tech training institute. He was also the kind of "Vatican II" priest who seems to have had a vague, even superficial understanding of the sacraments and sacramental regulations, exacerbated by the sort of clericalism that led him to take liberties with the liturgy. He tore the confessionals out of his parish church, rhetorically asking who was he to listen to and pardon people's sins (they could "do that for each other") and he officiated at a wedding service for a couple who were both divorced (one of them more than once), giving the bride and groom the Eucharist. (His bishop publicly rebuked him and sent him for a two-week retreat for that.) Definitely not the sort of priest I appreciate for liturgy.
Despite his liturgical failings, Cunningham's commitment to the poor and his passion for racial justice called me to an examination of conscience. He was 100% given to and for his needy neighbors. He loved them with the love of a shepherd who cannot rest until all his sheep are adequately pastured. He was not content to meet the immediate needs he recognized, but sought to discover and address their root causes. At the beginning of his Focus:HOPE work, Cunningham organized a thorough survey of food prices in and around Detroit, demonstrating that the higher prices being charged in the black communities contributed to the hunger and malnutrition that compromised children's ability to learn. He launched legal action against a major company that was moving its headquarters from Detroit to an all-white suburb--and proved from the company's own internal documents that the motive was racist. A lawsuit against the same company (again, launched by Cunningham) awarded damages and back pay to its black women employees for employment discrimination. Mostly, though, Cunningham was convinced that the most effective way to address the social breakdown he saw in the black communities in Detroit was to address their abysmal schooling (people were being given high school diplomas who were functionally illiterate) and the lack of job opportunities. Cunningham died in 1997, but the conditions in Detroit still give Focus:HOPE plenty to do.
The book kept me interested and inspired all the way through.
Starting shortly after he witnessed a destructive and deadly riot in Motor City, the visionary priest and the practical, steady-thinking housewife (with an incredibly generous husband!) started organizing distribution of food aid. It wasn't too long before they also began putting together a series of educational and industrial projects that created "facts on the ground" to provide not just job training, but jobs--good, solid jobs in areas involving manufacturing and engineering so that families would not be dependent on uncertain (and diminishing) free government rations. They did it through a combination of fund-raising and grant-writing coupled with government and industry contracts (including work for GM and the Department of Defense). Cunningham answered critics like pacifist Bishop Thomas Gumbleton by saying that it was better for the DOD to put money toward training American workers than paying foreign factories to manufacture weapons, and that putting Americans to work was better than sending them off to war. (However, Cunningham's spun-off manufacturing company did manufacture weapons components.)
Recognizing that family needs led some of the parents in his program to quit their training and abandon the job prospects it offered, he launched a state of the art childcare and early education facility nearby. Parents could drop in to check on their children at any time. Cunningham worked with local, state and national politicians to achieve this and so many other projects, once commenting that it was easier for him to get grants from Republicans (who didn't know how to address social ills) than from Democrats (who thought they had the answers). As a sign of how bi-partisan his support was, Focus:HOPE received generous funding (and official visits) from Republican Vice-President George Bush and later from President Bill Clinton.
Cunningham was a post-Vatican II variety of what used to be called a "brick and mortar priest": a pastor who knew how to build--whether it was a church or school, or a high-tech training institute. He was also the kind of "Vatican II" priest who seems to have had a vague, even superficial understanding of the sacraments and sacramental regulations, exacerbated by the sort of clericalism that led him to take liberties with the liturgy. He tore the confessionals out of his parish church, rhetorically asking who was he to listen to and pardon people's sins (they could "do that for each other") and he officiated at a wedding service for a couple who were both divorced (one of them more than once), giving the bride and groom the Eucharist. (His bishop publicly rebuked him and sent him for a two-week retreat for that.) Definitely not the sort of priest I appreciate for liturgy.
Despite his liturgical failings, Cunningham's commitment to the poor and his passion for racial justice called me to an examination of conscience. He was 100% given to and for his needy neighbors. He loved them with the love of a shepherd who cannot rest until all his sheep are adequately pastured. He was not content to meet the immediate needs he recognized, but sought to discover and address their root causes. At the beginning of his Focus:HOPE work, Cunningham organized a thorough survey of food prices in and around Detroit, demonstrating that the higher prices being charged in the black communities contributed to the hunger and malnutrition that compromised children's ability to learn. He launched legal action against a major company that was moving its headquarters from Detroit to an all-white suburb--and proved from the company's own internal documents that the motive was racist. A lawsuit against the same company (again, launched by Cunningham) awarded damages and back pay to its black women employees for employment discrimination. Mostly, though, Cunningham was convinced that the most effective way to address the social breakdown he saw in the black communities in Detroit was to address their abysmal schooling (people were being given high school diplomas who were functionally illiterate) and the lack of job opportunities. Cunningham died in 1997, but the conditions in Detroit still give Focus:HOPE plenty to do.
The book kept me interested and inspired all the way through.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews