Ms. Rachel Feeds Her Neighbors

At precisely 5:10 p.m., Rachel Allen knocked on the door of Isabelle Harris’ first-floor flat at Victory Gardens Apartments on Dixwell Avenue. Harris was expecting her. 

“Hey darlin,’” Allen said, handing her a Styrofoam container. 

Allen, 80, has been bringing meals to 15 of her neighbors every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday since early 2024. The food comes from the Fresh Starts program, which was established by her grand-nephew Marcus Harvin. The program, headquartered in the basement of Pitts Chapel Unified Free Will Baptist Church, has Harvin and his team, including Harris, assembling meals from excess food from area universities, as well as Haven’s Harvest, to ensure no one goes hungry. 

“This is something I just enjoy,” Allen said last Wednesday, as she wheeled her cart down the tidy, carpeted hallway under the soft light. ​“I like feeding people and I love people and when you live in a building, you’re supposed to be like family.” 

Allen grew up in Sumter, South Carolina, the second oldest of four daughters. Her grandmother, Sally Gamble, was a midwife. Allen used to accompany her when she would deliver babies. ​“I was the only one out of the family that used to go with her,” she said. ​“She showed me how to take care of the babies, how to do the cord, give the mother their bath.” 

When she was 20, she and her sister, Sally Harvin, traveled by bus to New Haven, where they settled with their husbands. ​“We told our church down there, Bethlehem Baptist, that we were leaving and we came up here to Pitts Chapel and I been here ever since,” she said, as she rapped on another door. 

“Hm,” she said when no one answered. ​“I don’t leave it. I get them later on.” 

In the first-floor reception area, Allen encountered Alice Johnson. ​“Hi baby, how you doin,’” she asked, taking a container out of the cart. Johnson opened it. There was chicken, beans, okra, and a roll. ​“Yes,” said Johnson, nodding. ​“There’s my dinner.” 

Allen told her that salad was in the refrigerator in the dining room area.

“Let me tell you about Rachel,” Johnson said, sliding the container into a compartment in her rollator. ​“She takes care of everyone, little children, us, everyone. The next thing is ushering. When she dresses up to be an usher, no one looks better than her.” 

Allen allowed herself a smile. ​“You enjoy that, y’hear?” she told Johnson. 

“Everyone’s on the porch,” someone told her as she passed. ​“That’s where I’m headed,” Allen told him.

“Sometimes they’re all outside in the back when it’s a nice day,” she said.

While her sister Sally worked for the Department of Social Services and then led the P.T.A. Council as its first Black president, Allen ran a childcare center, she said, as she continued through a conference room. Along with her two daughters, she and her second husband ​“had 125 foster kids came through our home, and we adopted the last three straight from the hospital,” she said, pushing open the door. 

Out on the sun-drenched patio, a group of six residents settled around a table, taking in the early-June sun and chatting about the unseasonably cool spring. 

“We’re all family here,” said Tina Edwards, as Allen handed containers to three of the residents. ​“And Miss Rachel, she’s always feeding people, her family, the family here, our homeless people, children. Make sure you put that in. She’s a community activist in her own way.” 

After delivering two more meals, there were three left. Allen said she would try later. ​“Most everybody in the building is friendly, and some of them stick to theirself, but that’s fine too,” she said, after exchanging pleasantries with someone exiting the elevator. 

Back in her cozy apartment, which was wallpapered with photos, she leaned her cart near the door. She talked about her grandmother and her two daughters— ​“this is the one whose husband was killed,” she said, pointing at a photo — and about her mother Oree Kendricks, whom she and Sally used to visit in Las Vegas. She talked about her grandson and her goddaughter and the three kids she adopted and her second husband, who passed away and loved children just like her. 

She talked about her sisters, Sally and Rose and Pat, and how much she missed Sally, who died in February 2021. ​“I’m the last one out of the four,” she said, sighing, over the sounds of ​“Blue Bloods” airing on her television. ​“Only God knows why, but I’m good. God has been good to me. 

“My daughter says, ​‘Mom, why don’t you take a break?’ I don’t want to take a break. I got to keep busy. When I’m dead, I’ll take a break,” she said. ​“This keeps me going, keeps me happy.”