Talk on Racial Healing

As a child, Spencer Perkins saw his father, the Rev. John Perkins, beaten, bloodied and jailed repeatedly in small-town Mississippi during the struggle for civil rights. By the time the younger Perkins was a teenager, he did not merely distrust white people. He hated them.

Chris Rice, a New Englander who had never had a close friendship with a black person, met Perkins while working with a nonprofit organization in the early 1980s.

Since then, the two have become friends and partners and have written a book, “More Than Equals,” that presents racial “reconciliation” as a solution for the ethnic strife and racial schisms that court-enforced integration has failed to erase.

Perkins and Rice live and work together in a racially integrated community in Jackson, Miss. They will be speaking at a seminar being held this weekend in Pasadena. The presentation will focus on racial healing and will include a panel discussion.

Time: 5 p.m. Sunday.

Place: Lake Avenue Congregational Church, third floor, Family Life Center, 393 N. Lake Ave., Pasadena.

Fee and Information: Free; refreshments and child care provided. (818) 797-4072.

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