Martin and Malcolm and John

In 1991, James Cone wrote a great book titled Martin and Malcolm and America: A Dream or a Nightmare.  I want to add another equally important name, John M. Perkins.  Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and John Perkins.

On August 28, 1963, during the March on Washington, Martin Luther King, Jr. uttered these immortal words:

"I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed, 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'  I have a dream that one day . . .  sons of formers slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood."

John Perkins was driving on the road from Mendenhall, MS to Jackson, MS while listening to King's speech on the radio.  John was so deeply moved that he had to pull off the road; he wept as he listened.  King's speech reinforced John's commitment to rebuilding poor and oppressed communities in Mississippi.

On April 3, 1964, Malcolm X uttered these powerful words, ideas born of bitter experiences with poverty and racism, ideas which King increasingly shared with Malcolm toward the latter part of King's ministry:

"I'm one of the 22 million black people who are the victims of Americanism.  One of the . . . victims of democracy, nothing but disguised hypocrisy.  So, I'm not standing here speaking to you as an American, or a patriot, or a flag-saluter, or a flag-waver. . . . I'm speaking as a victim of this American system [of oppression].  I don't see any American dream; I see an American nightmare."

Malcolm encouraged John to stand up and be a proud black man.  Perkins started wearing a goatee as a symbol that he was a man.  Under Mississippi segregation, black males were forbidden to wear beards reinforcing the fact that they were only boys.  John wants to be buried with his goatee intact.  In this sense, Perkins is a disciple of Malcolm X.

James Cone, who himself has written eloquently about the Afro-American experience in America, who has passionately condemned the oppression of blacks by white America, is at his scholarly best in Martin and Malcolm and America;  David Garrow accurately describes this book as 'an immensely valuable, landmark analysis by a scholar uniquely qualified to interpret both King and Malcolm.'"

In chapter eight titled "Shattered Dreams (1965-68," Cone traces King's developing awareness of the enormous poverty and suffering being experienced by millions of his Afro-America sisters and brothers.  Following the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Bill of 1965, King was reasonably optimistic about the future of black Americans.  This optimism was shattered five days later.  The Watts ghetto in Los Angeles exploded.  Thirty-four people died; whole blocks burned.

As King talked with the people of Watts, they told him that the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts had not significantly reduced their problems of poverty and racism.  After visiting numerous ghettos, King, in December 1967, four months before his assassination, uttered these discouraging words:

"In 1963 . . . in Washington, D.C. . . . I tried to talk to the nation about a dream I had had, and I must confess . . . that not long after talking about that dream I started seeing it turn into a nightmare, just a few weeks after I had talked about it.  It was when four beautiful . . . Negros girls were murdered in a church in Birmingham, Alabama.  I watched that dream turn into a nightmare as I moved through the ghettos of the nation and saw black brothers and sisters perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity, and saw the nation doing nothing to grapple with the Negroes' problem of poverty.  I saw that dream turn into a nightmare as I watched my black brothers and sisters in the midst of anger and understandable outrage, in the midst of their hurt, . . . turn to misguided riots to try to solve that problem. . . . Yes, I am personally the victim of deferred dreams, of blasted hopes."

Increasingly King spoke as a prophet of judgment as he saw America doing little to respond to the desperate economic straits of millions of Black Americans.  While King never forsook his principles of love and nonviolence, he sounded more and more like a revolutionary.  He was deeply disappointed in white moderates, most of whom did not support King when he moved beyond civil rights and voting rights to economic rights, economic justice, economic equality.  King never found an effective means of dealing with poverty though he was an eloquent prophet against poverty and racism in his last years.

It may be that now is the time to give heed to another great Afro-American, one who is not yet widely known.  John Perkins, born and raised a poor black in Mississippi, started a unique ministry in rural Mississippi in 1960.  As this ministry developed, it combined evangelism and social justice into what Perkins now calls Christian Community Development.  CCD is a strategy that brings rich and poor, black and white together to rebuild poor and oppressed communities.

For more, read some of John Perkins 17 books.  Perkins, whose formal education ended around third grade, has received 13 honorary doctorates.  Perkins was deeply disillusioned with the white church in Mississippi:  "The white church institutions in Mississippi have been the last bastion of racism and discrimination. . . . So if somehow all the church and church institutions had been wiped out in Mississippi, we would be much further along in terms of progress than we are at the present time."