Lessons learned from the Perkin's Center

I, Lowell Noble, spent most of the years between 1994-2010 in West Jackson, Mississippi volunteering at the John Perkins Center.  Between the Perkins Center and downtown Jackson, a distance of about two miles, was an area of poverty dating back at least to the year 1900.  Slavery had vanished from Mississippi, but blacks were still maids and servants who walked to work from shotgun housing to downtown Jackson.  Hundreds of these shotgun houses, areas of extreme poverty, still existed.  Some had been abandoned, some torn down, but some were still lived in.

Jackson State University was located in this area.  Jackson State was a historically black university with a black president and mostly black faculty.

Item 1:

Jackson State University could have and should have taken advantage of their strategic location and mounted in major, long-term effort to develop this poor area.  Jackson State had considerable expertise in social work, education, business and community development which they could have brought to bear to gradually eliminate most of the poverty in West Jackson.  Working closely with expertise that already existed such as the Perkins Center and churches, JSU could have trained dozens of community developers as it developed West Jackson.

In my opinion, JSU did only token community development; it did more displacement of the poor than development.  The poor were displaced, so JSU, as an institution, could develop.

Item 2:

A black Baptist church built a new million dollar church complex near JSU and next to some shotgun housing and extreme poverty.  But this black Baptist church did little to rehab or replace poor housing.  They built cathedral housing for God, but little housing for the poor.

Item 3:

Olin Park was the name of a shotgun house complex in West Jackson.  Voice of Calvary Ministries, a Christian Community Development Ministry, went into Olin Park and rehabbed about ten shotgun houses.  A necessary thing to do.  But a few years after completing this housing remodel, Voice of Calvary Ministries turned Olin Park over to local leadership.  Unfortunately, this local leadership had not been trained on how to continue Christian Community Development.  So Olin Park languished in continued poverty.  Any Christian Community Development ministry should think long-term, probably a whole generation, and deal in many facets of community life.  One single project ministries, while important in themselves, are never enough.

Item 4:

About a mile away, still in the shotgun housing area, Habitat for Humanity came in and tore down about ten shotgun houses and replaced them with brand new housing of the poor.  Again, a very good single project ministry, but Habitat for Humanity did not do additional community development, which is necessary to help a poor community thrive.

Next, lessons in Christian Community Development from Haiti:


Fond-des-Blancs, Haiti, an extremely poor village and county in rural Haiti, was blessed to have two forms of Christian Community Development.  The first was a Protestant one named Haiti Christian Development Fund, directed by Jean Thomas, a Haitian trained in Christian Community Development by John Perkins from West Jackson, Mississippi.  Jean Thomas had been trained at a seminary in the United States and he had a four year internship on Christian Community Development in West Jackson from John Perkins.  HCDF did multi-pronged community development.  Clean water, reforestation, education, farming project, pig nursery and pig cooperative, and so forth.

HCDF started some churches, but they were modest churches.  They built no cathedral housing for God.  Instead the resources that might have went into cathedral housing for God went into community development.  Jean Thomas stayed in the community for thirty-five years.

At the same time, but completely separate from HCDF, Catholics were doing their form of Christian Community Development.  They did one project only, moving from a simple medical clinic, to a rather sophisticated hospital for a poor, rural area.  In later years, they were assisted by the Kellogg Foundation.  The Catholics did not build cathedral housing for God; instead, most of their resources went into community development for the poor.

Fond-des-Blancs has been extremely blessed by having two types of community development that were done the right way.  Multi-pronged and long-term.  The Kellogg Foundation recognized this remarkable situation so in recent years they have put considerable financial resources into expanding these already quality ministries.  Conclusion, in Fond-des-Blancs, Christian Community Development was done the right way, better than in West Jackson.  For those that want to read more about HCDF see At Home with the Poor.