Jimmie Perry

To Take a Righteous Stand Jimmie Perry

TO TAKE A RIGHTEOUS STANDby Reverend Jimmie Perry -- SynopsisWhen Catherine Perry was forcibly brought from her home in Senegal, on the Continent of Africa in the 18th Century, she didn't imagine that she would be the mother of a brave line of Perry descendants who would not back down from anything not of God. It was their collective faith that brought them through the most oppressive parts of slavery, beginning in Eufaula, Alabama. Because of God's grace and His presence in the lives of the Perry family over six generations, they were able to survive every major war from the American Revolution to the Vietnam War. They lived through Post-Civil War Reconstruction, "Jim Crow," The Great Depression, Desegregation and "Re-segregation." The biggest test of this family's faith came after the Congress passed the Federal Seed & Fertilizer Loan Act of 1930, releasing large amounts of funds to poor farmers in the South who were in danger of bankruptcy and losing land that had been in their respective families for generations. It was discovered that in Dothan, Alabama, and later other Southern areas, a number of white persons who had lived their lives "above the law," thought they could swindle the federal government out of these special funds without getting caught. U. S. Government Marshals, lawyers and press became part of the famous Federal Seed & Fertilizer Loan Trial that lasted four years and ended with dozens of men and some women going to jail for fraud, embezzlement, perjury and bribery. Despite the overwhelming, tangible evidence against a large number of defendants, the prosecutors could make no case without witnesses with firsthand accounts of the corruption and cover-up that caused most poor farmers to lose their land without receiving the promised federal funds. Catherine Perry's grandson, the Reverend James Arthur Perry stepped forward to testify, at a period in our history when Negroes were murdered for bogus crimes, without benefit of a trial. He faced constant terror from the KKK, lost his wife giving birth to their eleventh child, and lost his ability to work, all because he stood for what was right. TO TAKE A RIGHTEOUS STAND is his story of courage in the face of unimaginable odds. His grandson, Reverend Jimmie Perry retrieved original source materials from the National Archives and local print that proved everything that a federal Judge had ordered Reverend James Arthur Perry to keep silent about until he died. While the dialogue among characters is fictitious, all of the facts reported in this book are true and accurate. Readers will be drawn to the drama and suspense of this story. It ends with the disclosure of Reverend James Arthur Perry's legacy, manifested in the youngest members of the Perry Family. They have reason to be proud of their rich heritage.