Page 37 - South Mississippi Living - July, 2018

Evangelical Church.
Changes in location, services and administration
continued throughout the 1950s. During the 1960s, a new community center opened featuring a craft shop, library, preschool classrooms, kitchen, and community room. St. Paul’s and First Evangelical combined to form The United Church of Christ of Biloxi. Back
Bay Mission became a member of the Commission
on Health and Welfare Services of the Evangelical
and Reformed Church (soon to be the Council for Health and Human Services Ministries of the United Church of Christ). The Mission was heavily involved in founding the Harrison County Planned Parenthood Association, and the Mission began hosting summer work camps to improve housing for elderly residents.
As civil rights took center stage in the turbulent ‘60s, the Mission began hosting integrated activities. In 1963, Mission staff and volunteers were arrested at the final wade-in along side many African-American leaders on Biloxi’s beaches, and many members of the church resigned their memberships in response. Also in 1963, the Mission hosted the Annual Ministerial Banquet of the Mississippi State Conference of the NAACP and was subjected to attacks for several months afterwards, including a cross burned at the Mission.
The Mission’s programs continued to change through the following decades as life on the Mississippi Gulf Coast changed and the organization proved its timeliness. To that end, Back Bay
Mission has served as an incubator for a number of organizations whose services are centered around the needs of the most vulnerable of the population.
Once on sound footing, these groups went out on their own to serve the community.
ABOVE: REV. GEORGE M.L. HOFFMAN AND MRS. LOUISE A. MCDONNELL of the First Evangelical Church in Biloxi began outreach to the ‘fisher folk’ of the Back Bay. LEFT: AS CIVIL RIGHTS took center stage in the turbulent ‘60s, the Mission began hosting integrated activities.
A PEACE POLE at the Division Street campus.
In the 1970s, Loaves and Fishes was started as a community kitchen feeding the hungry and homeless. This group was followed by the Gulf Coast Women’s Center (now the Gulf Coast Center for Nonviolence), which has a history of providing shelter to victims
of domestic violence; Coastal Family Health Center, which provides accessible, quality primary healthcare to all persons regardless of economic status; and South MS AIDS Task Force, which educates the public about the prevention and transmission of HIV/AIDS and provides services to those affected.
Other non-profits that had their beginning at Back Bay Mission include Open Doors Homeless Coalition, which raises awareness of this issue; Gulf Coast Housing Initiative, which provides affordable, safe and dignified housing opportunities to low and moderate income people; and the Harrison County Head Start Program, which promotes school readiness for children from low-income families.
Volunteers are a vitally important part of the Back Bay Mission story, both the local ones who donate their time on a daily and weekly basis and the 800
to 1,000 volunteers who come from around the country to spend a week rehabilitating houses for the elderly and other services. For many, the experience forms lasting impressions such as Benji Benzschawel who came from Wisconsin as a volunteer, liked the area and moved here. He now serves as assistant construction manager.
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