Lena Gantt: A Gem I Should Have Known

Lena Gantt knew how to get things done in Rochester: She would call a legislator daily.  She’d sit in a leader’s office until she got some face-to-face time.  She’d take buses to and from meetings, getting there on time and leaving late into the night.

Mrs. Gantt and her family came to Rochester in 1952, looking for a better life.  Like other African Americans who moved North during the Great Migration, Mrs. Gantt moved from one place of struggle to another.  She fought endless battles in Rochester for justice, leading the Black community for 30 years and leaving a better world behind, for children, youth, adults, and the elderly. 

I’m in the midst of researching the life of Mrs. Gantt, and I keep wondering:  How did I miss the story of the tireless community leader whom Rev. Myra grew up knowing as “Miss Lena,” the woman who knew and often worked with Rev. Myra’s own mother on various causes?  

I’ve learned that Mrs. Gantt, mother of the late Assemblyman David Gantt and five other sons, grew up in Alabama, in poverty, losing her dad at age 8 and going to work at age 9.  “Many a night I was hungry,” said during an oral interview in 1980, two years before she died at age 64. The experience of knowing poverty as a child was part of what drove her. That and love for the children and young people of this community. “Love…This is where I figured I could help [the children],” she said.

So she organized summertime “Tot Lots” and after-school programs for the City that were aimed to help young people on the streets feel that they were part of a family.  She was president of the North East District Council, helped found Action for a Better Community, and helped start the Anthony Jordan Health Center.  She volunteered with the Baden Street Settlement, the Lewis Street Center, and many other organizations.  She was the impetus behind the building of townhomes (now the Lena Gantt Estates) that gave tenants separate entrances and more breathing room — replacing the old Hanover high-rise towers. 

Mrs. Gantt was humble about her role.  The late Loma Allen, community activist, co-founder of the Urban League, and president of Baden Street Settlement, told an interviewer that Mrs. Gantt didn’t think of herself as a community leader, but Mrs. Allen insisted that she was a very effective one: “People instinctively come to you with questions, problems,” Mrs. Allen told Mrs. Gantt.

I keep going back to the words I heard recently, in a session of racial justice training as part of the Spiritus Anti-Racism Coalition.  Racial Justice Educator and Trainer Melissa Parrish reminded us not simply to learn about injustice around us, but to remain vigilant in understanding and acknowledging the injustices to which we are complicit:

“Remember, it’s important in understanding racial equity issues to intentionally have one eye out,” to identify and understand systemic and institutional racial issues as they are reflected in our society, she said.  But it is equally important, she added, that as a white ally in racial justice work “to have one eye in,” to examine our assumptions, beliefs, conscious and unconscious bias, and perspectives of privilege that result from being socialized as a white person in American society.

Her words were a reminder to me in this research that I have to face up to my own past, to see the problems I never saw fully before, and to acknowledge complicity in the world in which I have grown up.

I consider the white neighborhood I lived in and the white Catholic school I attended, and it occurs to me that this wonderful woman lived not 20 minutes’ drive from me. We kids heard constantly that our job was to “do unto others…”  We stopped class and prayed for the patient in the passing ambulance.  We joined Legion of Mary so we could visit the sick.  We helped homeowners clean up after Hurricane Agnes. 

Why didn’t we discuss the concerns of the Black people here?  Why weren’t we helping Lena Gantt make a better world?  Surely, many of our elders marched for justice in the 1960s and worked within institutions for more equity; however, that justice has been delivered only in increments. 

As white people, when we look back at our full history, the real history, we may be uncomfortable, but that is as it should be.  And yet if we can learn from the likes of Mrs. Gantt how to recognize what justice is, and then demand it, then we can move forward.     

It is late, but not too late to look around and ask, “What would Lena Gantt be fighting for today?” That’s the team I need to be on.

Sources:

1. Bunis, Dena.  “A Crusader Who Just Wouldn’t Give Up the Fight for the Downtrodden.” Democrat and Chronicle, Feb. 17, 1986. 

2. Carreo, William.  “Lena Lit Flame of Caring for Needy of Our Community.”  Democrat and Chronicle, Feb. 27, 2004. 

3. “Lena Gantt.” Rochester Voices.  From the Collections of the Local History and Genealogy Division of the Rochester Public Library.  Oral interview.  March 14, 1980. 

4. “Rochester Black Freedom Struggle — Loma Allen.”  Rochester Black Freedom Struggle Oral History Project, conducted by Laura Warren Hill, August 7, 2008. 

5.  Vancheri, Barbara.  “Goodbye to High-Rise Projects.”  Democrat and Chronicle.  15 March 1983.