I just learned of the passing this month of John Perkins, a Mississippi church leader and Civil Rights icon who was a friend of my parents.
Born in 1930, John fled Mississippi at 17 after a town marshal murdered his older brother. But he courageously returned in 1960 to start a reconciliation ministry there.
I recall hearing his sometimes harrowing and always inspiring stories over coffee after dinner at our home. In 1969 he tried to bail out protesters who had organized a boycott of White businesses in Simpson County, Mississippi, because of their refusal to hire Blacks.
John told us (and the linked story details) how the cops beat him up, kicking him all over the floor. They cut his hair with dull scissors and stuck a fork up his nose. The torture caused him to suffer a heart attack. Longer term, the experience left him with ulcers, and part of his stomach had to be removed.
And yet he was able to forgive his perpetrators and devote himself to racial reconciliation within the Christian community.
John played a role during a rough time in our family, too. After my brother Jay’s late-teen trouble with the law (he was arrested for burglary), a judge in Longview, Wash., agreed to release him from jail to community service with John’s group.
The story linked above has a good summary of John’s role in the church:
“Doug Huemmer, who spent nights in jail with Perkins in 1969 and 1970, said while Perkins was involved in work some described as civil rights activities, his work should be viewed as in the tradition of the Great Protestant Reformation ministers, such as John Calvin, Martin Luther and George Fox.
“Perkins sought to eliminate racism, corruption and sin in the white and Black American Protestant Church, Huemmer said. ‘John and I shared the belief that we have a great country, but we have succumbed to a spiritual decadence that is destroying the American character.'”
The Elephant Box 