African-Americans in L.B. stand tall

Anissa Moore, the first African-American elected president of the Long Beach City Council, stepped into the joyful, rhythmic singing and prayers ongoing Sunday at the Evangel Revival Community Church to celebrate Black History Month, and to deliver a message: the black community in the city is here to stay, and prosper.

In a nearly hour-long speech laced with biblical and historical references, Moore, 50, tied together African and American history, saying the two were interwoven, even if some of the history books do not always make that clear.

“Black History Month is a celebration of black achievements, but we also want to recognize that black history is also American history,” said Moore, a Senior Minister at the church and a communications professor at Nassau County Community College.

She mentioned leaders and academics, such as Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave and a major force behind the abolitionist movement; Carter Godwin Woodson, founder of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, and President Abraham Lincoln.

“The birthplace of humanity was in East Africa,” Moore said. King “Solomon’s wife was Egyptian. I could share a history of our presence felt in the Old and New Testament. Blackness and Christianity can exist as one. Christianity was the dominant religion in Africa.”

She brought the congregation to its feet when she said that “Some people focus on Martin Luther King, but there was also W.E. Du Bois, A Philip Randolph, Colin Powell, David Dinkins, Medgar Evers and the Rev. J.J. Evans,” a Long Beach pastor who died in 2000, and has a street ceremonially named after him in the city.

Moore, who moved to Long Beach from, Brooklyn in 2009, made headlines in 2015, when she became the first African-American elected to the city council, to a four-year term. Last August, she became the first African-American elected city council president. She lost her re-election bid when she ran as a Democrat on the Republican line, as part of a coalition ticket. She said she did not want to run with some others on the Democrat line because they appeared to be losing their races. But Nassau County Democratic Party Chairman said Moore’s actions were “a betrayal” of the party and he refused to endorse her.

Her tenure on the city council was at times tinged by controversy with the majority faction of the all-Democratic board. She voted against a $2.1 in bonds for separation payments. But the council may have regretted its move. State Comptroller Tom Di Napoli’s office audited the payments and found that the city made hundreds of thousands in separation payments to employees that they were not entitled to. One of them was former City Manager Jack Schnirman, who returned $52,000 to the city.

While praising African-American and white leaders who fought for civil-rights over the decades, Moore directed some of her fiery talk toward Long Beach.

“After Sandy, they wouldn’t let us move back,” she said. “But we’re not destroyed. Black people, she said, were not allowed at one time to enter apartment buildings in the city.

“We were hard-pressed on every side,” Moore said. “But we’re not crushed. God does not let us get crushed. Yes, we are persecuted, but we are not abandoned. People talk badly about use, but God never leaves us.”

Moore has been speaking publicly lately. Aside from her Sunday appearance at Evangel Revival Community Church, she spoke Friday night at Temple Emanu-El.

Is she running for office again? Perhaps, she said in a phone interview Monday, but not necessarily for Long Beach City Council. She is also executive director of the Long Beach STEAMS Academy, designed to help school children in science, technology and math.

“I don’t know what I want to do politically,” she said. “So many things have changed.”