A Cure in Black & White

A Review of The Antidote by Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson

Born in 1949 in Alabama, Jesse Lee Peterson lived with his single grandmother and several cousins in a tiny, tin-roofed house on a plantation overseen by his grandfather, who lived up the road with his wife. His parents never married, and his mother harbored a grudge against his father until shortly before her death.

Despite Jim Crow laws, Peterson never hated whites until he moved to South Central LA at age nineteen. Although the economy there was booming, the region swarmed with jobless men, welfare women, and gangs taking their anger into the streets. Black leaders Louis Farrakhan, Jesse Jackson, Roots author Alex Haley, and others said the white man was to blame, and Peterson listened...