By Roger K. Clendening

 (c) 2011 Roger K. Clendening

LONE TREE, CO – James Perkins Jr., the first Black mayor of Selma, AL, says he’s a plain-spoken man of faith who brooks no lies and judges folk by what they do rather than what they say.

The Selma native is one who, with thousands of others, natives and outsiders alike, helped wage life and death struggle over the last 50 years to secure and hold African-American rights in that part of the Black Belt south.

He was a recent visitor to the Front Range, invited to be the keynote speaker at a fund raising banquet for the Freedom Foundation, a group created by Anglos from Colorado whose work Perkins holds in high regard.

“I’ve been watching their work versus listening to what other folks have been saying, and their work is phenomenal,” Perkins told me in an interview at his hotel here. “They’ve earned my support and I’m here to support them.”

The non-profit foundation was incorporated in Parker, CO in 2005. A year later, after a Civil Rights Tour, nearly 50 people from Colorado left careers and homes and moved to Selma, according to the foundation officials.

Why? “They saw a desperate need and were inspired to fill it,” says a foundation brochure.

Several foundation board members on the tour were “struck by the need and injustice they saw,” including these: nearly half of Selma’s children live below the poverty line; the school district dropout hovers near 15%, almost double the national average.

The foundation members say they saw a place “rich in civil rights history, but still segregated and divided,” in a city nearly 80% Black with a country club that “still” bars Black membership and public schools are still racially segregated.

 Perkins, who declined to provide a copy of his prepared remarks, said he would speak in the “context” of Dr. Martin Luther King’s history of involvement in the African-American struggle for integration and freedom.

A Country Dinner Gala to benefit the Freedom Foundation was how the event was billed in an invitation sent to the Colorado Association of Black Journalists and subsequently shared with its members. The media, however, were not permitted to cover the event.

The $25 per person fundraiser, which included a Silent and a Live Auction, was held at the Spruce Mountain Guest Ranch in Larkspur, about 15 minutes north of Colorado Springs. The Dining in Denim event was co-sponsored by the Freedom Foundation and by In A Mother’s Arms; Spruce Mountain; “In – Ovation” by Tony Rosacci’s; TR’s BBQ; Starkey Productions; ShowTek; and Rich Productions, Inc.

Perkins would also share that he, and foundation members, have fought the ongoing Neo-Confederate efforts by white folk in Selma he describes as the “oppressors” to take Black folk, the “oppressed,” back to an even worst time when Black folk, at the barrel of a gun, had no rights that white folk were duty to respect.

The fact that Perkins’ election as mayor in 2000 – and his “style of governance, not catering to or favoring whites nor Blacks, choosing not to shift from being the oppressed to being the oppressor” – put him in a position to better observe champions and enemies of freedom but also brought about new challenges.

“Lots of folks don’t want alliances built,” he insists, noting that most whites and some Blacks in his city preferred the status quo when it came to the delivery of goods and services.

So, Perkins confides, he and his family, as well as the foundation, have been the “victims” of disinformation campaigns designed to negate whatever positive developments can come from their alliance.

“When, as mayor, I had that confederate monument removed, and when you have a Black face challenging the confederate neo-cons, that’s expected,” says Perkins. “But when you have a white face taking comparable actions and saying these things, there’s a shock effect” that destabilizes the political status quo, he says.

 Meanwhile, says Perkins, he, his family, foundation members, and other like-minded folk – Black and white – will continue the struggle for political, and economic freedom in Selma, consequences notwithstanding.

Perkins served two terms as mayor, from 2000 to 2008. He ran for congress in 2010 but had to drop out of the race midway after serious health issues forced him to have major surgery.

He says another run for elected office is not out of the question, adding that his ongoing response to that query is "never say never."