Cult of Sacrifice

Collusion between the local government and business resulted in the untimely death of Harvey Davenport’s mother. The problem is Harvey is a city council member. Cult of Sacrifice is one of those good realistic fiction books that puts readers into the shoes of people who live in sacrifice zones. Corruption in business and government takes center stage in this riveting tale that tackles the reality of sacrifice zones in America. Harvey finds himself fighting to help the black community of lower-income people living on a fenceline of toxic waste, otherwise referred to as a sacrifice zone. But, as a newly elected city council official, will Harvey survive the threats, gunshots, and beating that nearly take his life? Will he succumb to the seemingly impossible corruption of business and government practicing institutional racism? Or will his unrelenting resolve to try and separate local business and government corruption lead to a better, longer life for the residents he’s trying to protect? Author J. Greyson Fike brings forward a great cast of characters in this realistic fiction book, Cult of Sacrifice, that will open your eyes to the problem of institutional racism, sacrifice zones, environmental justice, and their relationship to corruption in business and government.

This book has its genesis in 1965 when, as a college senior, I traveled to Montgomery, Alabama. Hundreds of students responded to a call from SCLC and SNCC that spring to join an intense effort to register local Blacks to vote. While there, I witnessed police brutality against whites as well as Blacks just like we see today on America’s streets. Then, during the next three years organizing community protests against discrimination in housing and education in Chicago, I witnessed the same barbarous treatment of Blacks in the north. Throughout my career as a charity fundraiser and multi-media producer, and then as a university professor of nonprofit management, I have worked to expose the often subtle but deeply rooted and pernicious ways whites have persisted in enslaving Black Americans economically, politically and culturally for five centuries. I am thankful that retirement has brought the opportunity to write this story as just one example of how institutional racism permeates our business, political and cultural institutions as it poisons and destroys Black lives young and old.