I learned early that water is both life and betrayal, growing up in Jackson, Mississippi. The tap water in my childhood home tasted metallic, like rust had seeped into our pipes long before any politician acknowledged the water crisis. My mother boiled everything—rice, pasta, even the water we drank—to mask the chemical tang. "It's better safe than sorry," she'd say, though we all knew boiling couldn't remove lead. For years, elected officials debated acceptable contamination levels while families like mine rationed bottled water stored in reused milk jugs under the sink.
Our church, Mount Zion Baptist, became the unspoken infrastructure of survival. It wasn't just a place for Sunday sermons or weddings and funerals. We gathered there to organize against a slow-moving disaster that had been ignored for decades: the contamination of our water. Long before national headlines called it an "environmental justice crisis," we were living it. And when no one else stepped in, our church did what it always has and filled the gap between neglect and necessity.
The untold story about Jackson's water crisis begins in the 1970s, when the city's schools integrated classrooms and moving vans carried white families to suburbs like Madison. That's how West Jackson, where my grandfather bought his shotgun house with railroad sweat, became abandoned territory. The school integration provoked a mass exodus of white families who took their wealth and tax base with them, bleeding the resources that majority-Black Jackson needed to maintain its infrastructure. This resource flight left the city's century-old water system at the mercy of time, a direct consequence of racial abandonment. This was not just a lack of money, but a deliberate political decision to neglect a majority-Black community, diverting public funds that could have saved the system to whiter, wealthier towns.
Drinking water that tasted like old coins was normal in my childhood. In 2016, tests commissioned by the Mississippi State Department of Health (MSDH) found lead in 22 percent of South Jackson taps. But these results remained locked in filing cabinets, leaving residents to suffer. Elementary school kids clutched their aching heads during math lessons and diabetic elders vomited bile after morning tea. Ms. Eloise, my 68-year-old neighbor, would spit the truth: "Rotting pipes kill slow, but Mississippi death certificates call it natural causes." When the agency sworn to protect us hides reports, it's not oversight. It's violence.
By the time I turned 13, our pastor began distributing portable water filters after Sunday services. He called it "purifying our faith and our water," a phrase that sounded poetic until the night our refrigerator filter failed. We used the last of our emergency stash of water to cook dinner, brush our teeth, and refill our thermoses for school. That moment crystallized the church's role as not just spiritual sanctuary, but a frontline responder in a slow-killing environmental disaster that governments ignored for decades.
What struck me most wasn't just the urgency of the situation, but how naturally the church assumed this responsibility. There was no debate about whether it should step in, only discussions about how to do it efficiently. Volunteers set up tables by the fellowship hall doors, labeled boxes with Sharpie markers, and created a schedule so people could pick up supplies without waiting hours in the heat. It was organized chaos, yes, but it worked. In a city where municipal systems often failed, we built our own networks of care.
The crisis reached a breaking point in the summer of 2021. News outlets reported that Jackson's main water treatment plant had collapsed again, leaving nearly 150,000 residents under a boil-water advisory for over a week. The governor declared a state of emergency, deploying the National Guard with bottled water shipments. But the military convoys moved slowly, bottlenecked by bureaucracy. Meanwhile, Convoy of Hope, a faith-based relief organization, arrived within 48 hours, partnering with local Black churches to distribute pallets of water and filters.
At Mount Zion, we unloaded 10 pallets behind the sanctuary, a scene reminiscent of Civil Rights marches, where community action filled the void left by systemic neglect. Within hours, volunteers were sorting cases by size and weight, labeling them for seniors, infants, and large families. Children helped carry boxes, teenagers passed out informational flyers on water safety, and elders sat at folding tables, offering guidance to those who looked lost. There was no formal training required, no hierarchy dictating who led and who followed. Everyone simply showed up, instinctively knowing their roles. Unfortunately, this kind of coordination didn't come from a manual; it came from generations of experience surviving under pressure.
Volunteers transformed our fellowship hall into a distribution hub. Under the awning, teams in branded t-shirts formed assembly lines. Cases of water rolled down makeshift conveyors built from milk crates, while LifeStraw Home filters lined tables for pickup. By sunset, we'd handed out 500 cases and 200 filters, yet crowds lingered, hoping for more. Children clutched ration tickets printed on mismatched paper, their eyes wide with the unspoken fear that tomorrow's water might still be poison. At that moment, I realized a community-centered church could be more dependable than any pipeline.
What made this possible wasn't just the physical supplies we offered, but the trust we carried. People didn't necessarily believe the city's warnings, and they certainly didn't trust the politicians who issued them. But they believed in us. They believed in the pastor who had baptized their children, in the women who cooked meals every Sunday, in the men who repaired pews and fixed leaky roofs. When our church spoke, it wasn't through a press release. It was from lived experience, from shared struggle. And that made all the difference.
Word spread quickly. If you need water or a filter, come to Mount Zion after Wednesday and Sunday services. Soon, our small congregation became a regional nexus. A group from Atlanta's Real Inspiration Ministries arrived with 250 filters, 400 shower purification systems, and cleaning supplies. Their pastor stood on the church steps, megaphone in hand, declaring, "We do this because we are family." His words resonated. This wasn't charity—it was kinship, a tradition rooted in generations of mutual aid.
Over the next few weeks, our network expanded further. Churches across the city coordinated efforts. Some focused on elderly outreach, others prioritized single-parent households, and a few partnered with local schools to provide filtered water for students. What unified us wasn't a grant or a policy directive, but a shared understanding. We were not waiting for help to arrive, we were creating it ourselves.
This kind of grassroots organizing isn't unique to Jackson; it's part of a long history of forced Black self-reliance, from mutual aid societies in Reconstruction-era towns to cooperative grocery stores in segregated neighborhoods. But in this moment, it felt urgent, immediate. It felt like resistance.
But distributing water was only the beginning. My pastor organized a "river blessing" at the Pearl River, its banks choked with industrial runoff. On a humid Sunday morning, I joined a procession of congregants carrying jugs of purified water and sprigs of rosemary. As the pastor recited prayers, a hush fell over us—the same silence that might precede a landmark court ruling. He poured filtered water into the river, murmuring commitments to "restore what has been defiled." Neighbors watched from the highway bridge above, some curious, others skeptical.
There was something deeply symbolic about returning clean water to a river that had been poisoned by neglect. It wasn't just about purification. It was about reclaiming space, asserting that the land, water, and people who lived here mattered. It reminded me of the Freedom Churches of the 1960s, places where activists gathered between marches, where strategy meetings happened in basements, where sanctuary meant more than stained glass windows. Our blessing wasn't a protest, it was a declaration. We would not let pollution erase us.
Behind the scenes, organizers mobilized. A 21-year-old resident and political science student at Jackson State University, known only as "Maisie" in community circles, organized workshops teaching residents to assemble home filtration systems. At a forum, she distributed flyers explaining the carcinogenic risks of lead and arsenic. Her calm determination reminded me that environmental justice isn't just about hardware, like filters, pumps, and bottled water, but education, empowerment, and accountability.
"Clean water is a right, not a commodity," she said, her words echoing in my head long after the event. Maisie and her team trained volunteers to teach neighbors how to use the filters properly, how to test water quality using DIY kits, and how to advocate for policy changes through letters and petitions. She also connected us with a coalition of student-led groups pushing for federal funding to replace Jackson's aging water infrastructure. They met with city officials, actively engaged with the media to advocate for solutions, and hosted town halls, all while balancing coursework and part-time jobs. These were deeply personal campaigns. Many of these students grew up drinking the same contaminated water, watching their younger siblings suffer headaches and stomach pains.
Our efforts contrasted sharply with mainstream environmental movements. At rallies in neighboring cities, I saw predominantly white crowds brandishing signs about carbon footprints and "systemic change." They spoke in academic terms, rarely collaborating with faith communities. In Jackson, we spoke of survival, a word that carries urgency when the water you drink is slowly killing you. We knew salvation wouldn't arrive via a politician's email. We remembered the '80s, when state technicians tested our water and vanished; the 2000s, when white activists made documentaries about us but never returned. My church's pragmatism, which was rooted in theology and generations of hollow promises, cut through policy papers. While outsiders debated distant futures, we were burying neighbors with kidneys shredded by arsenic.
Lead poisoning doesn't wait for legislation to pass. Arsenic doesn't pause for a summit. Every day without clean water was another day our bodies absorbed toxins, another day our children struggled in school, another day our elders faced health complications. There was a different rhythm to our organizing. It wasn't flashy or headline-grabbing. It was slow, intentional, and deeply personal. We held prayer walks through neighborhoods most affected by contamination and wrote letters to senators, signed by dozens of church members. And when those letters went unanswered, we kept showing up with hymns and hope.
By autumn, national media like Time Magazine covered the crisis, spotlighting the feud between Governor Tate Reeves and Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba. Lumumba's pleas for infrastructure funding, ignored for years, finally resonated as voters saw how broken pipes carried the weight of systemic neglect. I watched footage of him touring murky treatment facilities, his suit rolled up and boots caked in sludge. Yet as he spoke of federal assistance, I thought of the pastors lining up pallets behind our church, answering each emergency with the tools we had. While politicians argued over budgets and blame, we kept organizing. Every Wednesday, our doors opened for filter replacements. Every Sunday, we offered free water testing. We partnered with a local health clinic to provide blood screenings for children suspected of lead poisoning. We hosted cooking classes showing how to prepare meals without relying on tap water. We created a hotline for residents who couldn't make it to the church in person. These were our lifelines and unlike government programs that came and went with election cycles, our commitment was constant.
That winter, as temperatures dipped, we pivoted to door-to-door visits. Volunteers checked filters, replaced cartridges, and installed pipe insulation for elderly neighbors. The Christian philosophy of "loving thy neighbor" took on a new meaning. We delivered care packages and shared homemade stews. People called it "God's work," but I saw it as defending basic human dignity. Our church was reminding people that they mattered, that someone cared enough to knock on their door and ask if they were okay. For many, especially older residents who lived alone, these visits were the only human contact they had all week. Faith, in this context, wasn't about doctrine or dogma, it was about presence. About showing up when no one else would. About refusing to let anyone fall through the cracks.
In early spring, researchers from Jackson State University published a study using the Community Readiness Model, noting that Black churches in the area had rapidly mobilized into effective response units, outpacing municipal services in certain neighborhoods. They argued that faith-based networks should be integral to future public health planning. The accolade felt bittersweet; it validated our actions but underscored how government agencies had lagged for decades. What the report confirmed was something we already knew: When institutions fail, communities find ways to survive. These churches didn't become a collective environmental response unit overnight. They evolved into one out of necessity. Generations of forced resilience, forged through slavery, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights Movement, taught us how to organize under pressure, how to build trust in times of crisis, and how to lead without permission. We didn't need a grant or a task force to tell us what to do. We already had the tools, like faith, fellowship, and an unshakable belief that we deserved better.
Reflecting now, our response to Jackson's water crisis was kinship in action. We acted with the conviction that serving our God means also serving our community. When the taps ran dry, the church became the last shelter against pollution, and in that shelter, I learned that faith without works is dead. Today, as national attention shifts, I still drive past our fellowship hall and see stockpiles of filters waiting for the next breakdown. The crisis isn't over; aging infrastructure and environmental racism persist. Yet I carry hope. My church taught me that even when systems fail, community, rooted in shared history and sustained by faith, will endure and prevail.