The dirt in that part of Mississippi is red. In the summer of 1946, a sixteen-year-old boy stood on it looking down into an open blue coffin.
The young man inside was his older brother Clyde, who had gone off to fight in Germany and had come home with a Purple Heart and a fistful of combat decorations. He was a young man of good character, valor, and love. Yet, he had discovered on arriving that none of it purchased him a single inch of standing in his own hometown.
On a Saturday evening that summer, when the deputy marshal’s club came at him from behind a second time, Clyde caught it in his hand, and the marshal stepped back and shot him twice in the stomach. He died a few hours later, in his younger brother’s arms.
The boy standing over the coffin was John Perkins, a young man who had already been handed too many burdens to carry.
His mother had died of pellagra when he was seven months old - malnutrition, which is the polite way of saying that she starved. His father had walked away. He was raised by a grandmother in a sharecropping family that spent most of the year in the fields, which meant that school happened when it could. For John, it stopped happening somewhere around the third grade.
The next year his family scraped together the money to put him on a train to California, because they had a reasonable fear that whoever killed Clyde might come looking for the brother who watched him die. John went, and he went with a vow that he would never set foot in Mississippi again.
Have you ever been hurt so badly that you made a vow like that? Most, if not all, of us have. It’s often a reason people give up on God or another relationship that did not meet your expectations. Sometimes this type of vow is healthy, even necessary. Other times, new information or experiences may lead you to reconsider.
In the case of young John Perkins, his vow seemed reasonable and wise. Most of us would have done the same and kept it.
The life he was entitled to keep
California gave him what Mississippi never would. He arrived with a third-grade education, found work in a foundry, learned the trade quickly, and became a skilled laborer and a union representative - which is a remarkable sentence when you consider that the man doing the representing could barely have read the contract when he started.
He married Vera Mae Buckley in June of 1951, was drafted, served in Okinawa, came home, and began building the ordinary and hard-won life of a grateful man who had climbed out of something dark.
In 1957 his three-year-old son Spencer came home singing “Jesus Loves the Little Children,” and it touched John Perkins. Spencer invited his father to church and John Perkins came to faith.
John Perkins had everything he may have wanted - a loving wife, son, career, and safe community. Yet, love can challenge us to do things we never thought we would.
By 1960, John and Vera Mae had a wonderful life and thousands of miles between them and everything that had ever been done to them.
That is the year they moved back to Mississippi.
Why go back?
That’s my first thought. How about you?
John Perkins did not go back because the situation had improved. It had not. He did not go back because he had received assurances. There were none.
He went back because in California he had been sitting with Black teenagers from the South who were locked up and in trouble. He considered where every one of them came from, and concluded that the trouble had a source and somebody had to go to it.
He also believed, plainly and without embarrassment, that God had told him to go. Those were not two reasons. They were facts that led him to believe he had to step into the arena, because if he did, he would make a difference - and he would not be alone. He believed God would be there every moment.
It was not a welcome decision. Vera Mae did not want to go. Neither did their children, who were happy in California. It wasn’t John Perkins’ first choice either. They had a good income, good friends, standing in their community, and a church they loved.
In the summer of 1960, they went anyway.
Lots of people do the right thing when the odds are in their favor. That’s not courageous good character. It’s simple math.
Courageous good character is when you run the numbers, know there’s risk - even significant danger - and you go anyway because if you don’t, then who? If not now, then when? It’s not about a destination you’re hoping to reach, but a purpose you’re living for.
There are times - not every situation - where you need to have grit, stay in the game long enough to make a positive difference. Other moments in life call us to return to a game we had every right to quit and apply what we’ve learned to achieve something significant for the common good.
Our standard in the Simple Liberty movement constantly asks us to assess information and decisions against three standards: Find the best way - is it? Do the right thing - is it? Everyone matters - is this best for the common good?
Someone can convince themselves the first two standards have been met, but then fail the third. History is littered with people who won their argument by grinding others into submission rather than submit to truth and the greater good.
One thing that sets John Perkins apart is he never let go of the third, and his past may have tempted him more than once to do so.
What he built
When they got there, much of the town turned out to greet them, mainly because nobody who had ever managed to get out of that place had come back.
He did not go back to make speeches, though he could have. He went back and built things.
Voice of Calvary Ministries began in 1962 and grew into a Bible institute, a leadership development center, a thrift store, and a health center. Later came housing, a co-op, adult education, tutoring for children whose parents worked the same fields his grandmother had worked.
In 1967 two of the Perkins children walked through the doors of Mendenhall’s previously all-white high school as its first Black students, which tells you something about what the family was willing to spend, and which of them was doing the spending.
He did not send money into that community from a safe distance. He moved his wife and his children into the danger and stayed.
Brandon
In February of 1970, students associated with his work were arrested on false charges and held in the jail at Brandon, in the next county over. John Perkins drove there to post their bail.
The officers were waiting for him. Deputy sheriffs and highway patrolmen forced a fork up his nose and down his throat, beat him to the floor, and kicked him in the head, ribs, stomach, and groin. They made him mop up his own blood.
He survived the night, and in the months that followed the strain produced a heart attack and ulcers so severe that surgeons removed two-thirds of his stomach.
My first instinct: Disgust, anger, judgment, desire to see those bullies get severe legal consequences. Appointed to serve the common good, yet they violated their community.
But this post isn’t about me.
What did John Perkins do after that? Certainly, it’s reasonable to leave Mississippi then, right?
He said afterward that when he saw what hate had done to the men who beat him, he could not hate them back - he could only pity them. He leaned on his faith and refused to allow hate to do to him what it had already done to them.
Jesus only gave one new command - “…love one another; as I have loved you, so you must love one another; by this everyone will know you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
He was teaching his closest students, yet felt the need to repeat his lesson three times in three sentences.
John Perkins got it. His refusal to hate was not weakness, or declining to fight, since he spent the next fifty years filing lawsuits and organizing and pressing on voting rights, equal pay, hiring, and the treatment of prisoners.
It was a man refusing to let the evil that was done to him determine the kind of man he would be. He chose his character over his grievance, and he chose it while he was still bleeding.
He was not the first to choose this. Dr. King had walked it ahead of him, and so had ordinary people of every heritage for over one hundred years.
For instance, while John Perkins lay recovering, a white doctor sat beside his bed and read to him, and would not leave until he had fallen asleep. Nobody wrote that doctor’s name into the history books. He simply showed respect, kindness, and love to a man his neighbors would have left alone.
Courageous good character, quietly exercised, is the glue that has often held this country together.
Credentials welcome character
In the last decades of his life, that third-grade dropout received honorary doctorates from nineteen colleges and universities, the first of them from Wheaton. He advised five United States presidents. Four schools founded programs bearing his name, and a rock band wrote a song about him that reached number one on a national chart in 2009.
A sharecropper’s boy who never finished the third grade ended up with more doctorates than most faculty lounges, and he collected every one of them without ever sitting for a single exam.
He also never asked for one. He was busy.
The band, for the record, called their song “The Sound (John M. Perkins’ Blues).” Perkins had spent his life insisting that love is the final fight. Somebody was listening.
Character does not chase credentials. Credentials, eventually, come looking for character.
What if we changed first?
John Perkins changed first.
How about we follow his lead?
Most of us are not being asked to go back to our Mississippi. We are being asked to go back to a marriage that has gotten hard, a church that disappointed us, a neighborhood we have written off, a school board meeting we quit attending, a relative we stopped speaking to, a community that no longer resembles the one we grew up in.
We do not control others - how they process information and experiences, or the decisions they make, words they speak, and actions they take.
But we can make our own decisions, as John Perkins did. He thought back, considered the present, prayed about the future, and chose a calling more than an opportunity.
The change point in America is not politicians, billionaires, or others in our ruling class.
It’s people like you and me - the ones our Constitution put in charge.
So, the first question is what John Perkins may have asked himself - What can I change that will make me the best possible person I can be?
Are we willing to change first? If so, then how?
Courageous good character is needed in America today.
There is no fear in courageous good character. There is discernment.
There is no anger, hate, or bullying in courageous good character.
John Perkins joined our Founders in showing a better way, along with Dr. King and scores of others.
What would happen in your life if you chose to be a person of courageous good character - starting now?
The Seven Daily Disciplines
Everything in the Simple Liberty people’s movement rests on three values and nine virtues, and those values and virtues express themselves day to day in seven disciplines.
Faith and Purpose - Live from a higher source of meaning, truth, and calling, so that love and joy remain strong in any circumstance.
John Perkins had his life redirected by his young son’s invitation on a Sunday morning, and lived afterward from a source higher than self-interest.
Integrity - Do what is right when no one is watching, and live out the goodness of what you claim to believe.
John Perkins moved back to Mississippi - where he felt called to make a difference - when staying in California was honorable, defensible, and free.
Common Good - Invest kindly in what strengthens families, communities, and the nation rather than self-interest.
John Perkins invested in the common good rather than his personal wealth - a health center, thrift store, co-op, and training center to serve others.
Justice and Compassion - Defend what is right while caring about the dignity and needs of others, gently holding the line whether you are powerful or powerless.
John Perkins spent fifty years fighting for what was right, while refusing to hate people like the men who nearly killed him.
Faithful Relationships - Build trust through loyalty, humility, and forgiveness, even when it requires faithfulness and patience for years.
John Perkins was loyal to Vera Mae for nearly three-quarters of a century, and had a lifetime of building trust across every line - Black and white, North and South, rich and poor - the connected community of a healthy America.
Excellence - Do ordinary things well, with the self-control to prepare carefully and master the details that are often overlooked.
John Perkins advanced a third-grade education to a skilled trade, then into leadership, and a focus on honorably serving the less fortunate.
Legacy - Live as a grateful good steward, who peacefully passes freedom, character, opportunity, and responsibility to the next generation.
John Perkins left institutions that outlived him, and thousands of ordinary citizens - like you and me - still doing the work he started.
Courageous good character prevails is the first common value of Simple Liberty. The three virtues that support it build on one another.
Faith determines how you process information and experiences.
Truth is what is factually real, and faith shapes whether you are willing to receive it.
Integrity is how you live out your faith and what you determine to be true.
March 2026
John M. Perkins died on March 13, 2026, in Jackson, Mississippi, at the age of ninety-five. He is buried in the New Hebron red dirt where he began.
On March 5, his daughter Elizabeth sat beside him, took his hand, and sang “Jesus Loves the Little Children.” As she sang, he squeezed her hand.
Later that day, Vera Mae told him she loved him and thanked God for the years they had been given, and he answered her by locking eyes with her and holding her hand.
Eighty years earlier, a sixteen-year-old boy stood over a blue coffin on red dirt and swore he would never go back.
He went back. He built. He forgave. He stayed.
He finished holding her hand.
One thought to leave with you. Do not demand courageous good character of others until you’ve dedicated yourself to it first.
Your challenge this week.
Name the one person who did the most to shape your character in good ways. If that person is living, call them this week and thank them - mention a specific memory of how they modeled good character and encouraged it in you.
If that person is gone, tell somebody else about them - pay it forward, water the seed, so the memory keeps healing and helping others.
If this helped you think back, share it with someone you care about.
Next we discuss Faith - where courageous good character begins, and how a commoner with nothing at all decided what was true.
We can do this.
Think Back.
Primary Source - John M. Perkins, Let Justice Roll Down (1976). His own account, in his own voice, written six years after Brandon.
Research - The Equal Justice Initiative’s documentation of violence against returning Black veterans after World War II, which establishes Clyde’s death as a pattern rather than an aberration.
History - Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns, on the Great Migration that carried a frightened seventeen-year-old to California.
Reflection - John M. Perkins, One Blood, his late word to a country still arguing with itself.
Sources for this post
John M. Perkins, Let Justice Roll Down (Regal, 1976), ch. 1, for Clyde’s death in New Hebron in the summer of 1946 and for John’s departure for California.
Mississippi Encyclopedia, “Perkins, John M.,” for the return to Mississippi and his account of the call to go back.
Christianity Today, Religion News Service, WLBT, and Mississippi Today, March 2026, for his death, the Brandon beating, and the family’s account of his final week.
“Love is the final fight” — his own words, quoted by his family in his obituary, Johnson Funeral Home, Prentiss, Mississippi, March 2026.