The Rev. Siegfried Darcell White thinks often about a man he used to see sitting outside a liquor store in southwest Atlanta. People would pass the man on their way inside. Sometimes he was out there overnight.
One day in December 2014, the man was found dead lying behind the store near the intersection of Campbellton Road and Childress Drive.
From that day on, White has dedicated his life to saving as many unhoused people as he can from dying in the cold.
“Not on my watch” is his mantra.
“I don’t want you to freeze to death out here,” said the Atlanta minister and longtime advocate for racial justice. “This is what I feel I’m called to do. This is why I’m out here.”
Volunteering his time, White works long hours in frigid temperatures to help people find a warm place to stay. Over the past two weeks, White said he has driven about 100 people in vanloads to shelters and a city warming center.
His efforts have been especially crucial this week, as punishing temperatures and biting winds prompted hundreds of people to seek relief in government-run warming centers and shelters in the metro area. White has been picking up people in his van at the Gateway Center, which provides services for people experiencing homelessness, and driving them to the city’s warming center beside Central Park.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
On Tuesday afternoon, White found a man lying on a sidewalk near Gateway Center, along Pryor Street Southwest, who seemed to be struggling to get up. White said he called 911 and waved down a police officer, requesting an ambulance for the man.
“They’ll be here in a minute,” White told the man, who was lying beside his walker, assuring him that paramedics were on the way. “We’ve got to make sure we don’t let this happen again.”
In an interview, White said he worries at the end of some days that maybe he didn’t do enough to help.
“I want to make sure, when I go to bed at night, that I have ‘left it all on the field,’” he said, using a sports analogy. “At least when I lay down at night, I tried my best to help people.”
White, now 63, was taught to care for others when he was growing up in LaGrange. He remembers his father telling him: “‘If you help someone, somebody is going to help you.’” His mother reminded him to avoid hurting people’s feelings.
“I grew up seeing my mother and father sharing what they had,” White said.
After his father died, White moved as a teenager from LaGrange to Dayton, OH., to live with relatives. He said he found God while living in Dayton and eventually became an ordained Pentecostal minister.
“I felt a call by God to spread his word to people I meet,” he said. “I felt led to preach.”
He later moved to Atlanta and joined Concerned Black Clergy, a faith and advocacy organization. In Atlanta, White has fiercely advocated for senior citizens and for racial justice, among many other issues.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
He is well known in Atlanta’s faith community. One old friend, Larry “Black Pill” Hill, remembers meeting White nearly 20 years ago on Auburn Avenue where White was trying to help an unhoused person. Over the years, Hill worked with White’s organization, Concerned Dads Inc., in support of Atlanta’s fathers. White also has his own ministry called Not on My Watch.
“You can’t say enough about Rev. White,” Hill said. “He’s been out on the streets doing it without any recognition. He’s just a fantastic guy. He’s hardworking. He’s very dependable.”
White, who is divorced and has two grown sons, was out marching and calling for justice after Minneapolis police killed George Floyd in 2020. He also helped organize a memorial service for Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man who was shot and killed after three white men chased him in pickup trucks as he was out for a jog, also in 2020.
Other faith leaders who have worked with White are moved by his compassion. One among them, Rev. Raymond Washington, said he’s proud to call White his friend.
“He goes to bat for the poorest, and he goes to bat for the rich,” said Washington, a local pastor. “He has a heart like Dr. King.”
Simone Whatley, a minister who lives in Peachtree Corners, met White while she was working at a homeless shelter in Atlanta years ago. She said White helped her come up with the name for her nonprofit ministry, Women in the Struggle.
The two of them pulled together whatever resources they could to help unhoused people and others in need, she said.
“He hosted outdoor revivals, prayer services,” Whatley said. “He gets leftover food at food banks and gives it to people under bridges.”
On Thursday afternoon, White was planning to spend several more hours looking for people who needed a lift to a safe place.
“This is my life,” he said. “It’s who I am.”
