Dream With Me

Race, Love, and the Struggle We Must Win

John M. Perkins, Oasis Audio 978-1-61375-879-3, Audiobook $16.99 (6.5 hrs)

John M. Perkins’s Dream with Me: Race, Love, and the Struggle We Must Win is the powerful testament of a man who was brought to the brink by racism, yet chose to follow a path of peace, love, and reconciliation.

“How in the world did I get here?” asks Perkins, now in his eighties. He holds thirteen honorary doctorates, founded the John and Vera Mae Perkins Foundation, and shares platforms with leaders and luminaries worldwide—and is still in awe of the way his life turned out.

Born in rural Mississippi to a family of sharecroppers and bootleggers, Perkins knew hardship and racism firsthand. He dropped out of school in the third grade, and was sixteen when his beloved brother, a World War II veteran, was shot and killed by a police officer while waiting to see a movie.

Instead of turning his pain and anger to destruction, Perkins immersed himself in the civil rights movement, registering voters, putting his own children’s lives on the line to desegregate schools, and organizing efforts toward economic independence in black communities. Arrested, tortured, and nearly killed by white law-enforcement officers, he remained committed to the real American Dream—that of liberty and justice for all.

“Neither clenched fists nor helping hands alone can bring about the complete transformation God wants,” writes Perkins. “Only love can touch us at the point of our pain and begin to heal us and make us whole, individually and collectively.”

Read in a strong, rich, expressive voice by Calvin Robinson, John M. Perkins’s Dream with Me evokes the raw stories of the American Civil Rights Movement and calls for a new reality in race relations, one in which “true justice is wrapped up in love.”