On February 7, 1970, a Saturday night, police arrested a group of black college students. Perkins and two of his associates went immediately to the jailhouse to post bail. But when they spoke up, five deputy sheriffs and highway patrolmen surrounded them, placed them under arrest, and began beating them violently. Perkins had done nothing wrong. He didn’t even have a police record. But he was a black leader trying to help young African Americans, and that was all it took in that particular town.

The beating went on for most of the night. The aggressors stomped on Perkins and kicked him in the head, ribs, and groin. One officer picked up a fork and jammed it first up his nose and then down his throat.

John Perkins was unconscious most of that interminable evening. He was so swollen and mutilated that the helpless students around him were sure that he was either dead or approaching death. But by the grace of God alone, he did not die.

A nonbeliever reacting to such a beating would have been embittered. He would have sworn revenge and used every recourse, legal or possibly otherwise, to strike back at his attackers and perhaps at others he perceived to be of the same ilk. A person could merely ride his rage and seethe with anger for a lifetime after such an experience. He could work out his revenge on a lot of people, and there would always be more yet to inflict.

John Perkins did not choose that road. He had come to Mississippi on a mission for black people. They needed his support and guidance, and that guidance had to begin right now with his example.

He later wrote of his attackers, “I remembered their faces—so twisted with hate. It was like looking at white-faced demons. For the first time, I saw what hate had done to those people. These policemen were poor. They saw themselves as failures. The only way they knew how to find a sense of worth was by beating us. Their racism made them feel like ‘somebody.’ ”11

As a Christian, Perkins could not receive hate and deal it back. Such an option was not open to a disciple of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace. Even as he lay on the floor of the jail cell, crimson puddles around him, welts rising on his body—he was in prayer. Lord God, he murmured, if You will only get me out of this place alive…

He knew he shouldn’t be bargaining with the Lord, but he couldn’t stop the pleadings that rose from his heart. I want to preach to these people, too. I want to preach to those driven by hatred, and I want to drive out that hatred forever.

Perkins refused to hate. All he felt was pity.