John Perkins, a civil rights-era activist and evangelical minister who led ministries in Jackson, Mississippi, was remembered this week for decades of community work and global influence, the Magnolia Tribune reported.
The Tribune described Perkins as “incomparable” and “one of a kind,” and noted that people from around the world came to Jackson to learn ministry methods from him and his organizations, the paper said.
According to commemorations cited by the Tribune and an interview in the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center Archives, Perkins was born into a family of sharecroppers in segregated Mississippi. The accounts say his mother died when he was 7 months old, his father left soon after, and his grandmother and extended family raised him. His older brother, Clyde, was killed by a police officer, and Perkins later moved to California, where he learned a trade and started a family…