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Not long after he moved to Durham in 1998 -- in part because of Jordan -- he met Samuel Jenkins at a drug recovery meeting and struck up a friendship.

Jenkins owns Samuel & Sons Barber Shop on Angier Avenue. The two men's conversations centered mostly on improving life in East Durham.

"Melvin always presents himself as 'I'm a man, just like you,' " Jenkins says. "He's one of those guys where if he gives you his word, then he has your back."

Whitley is admittedly stubborn about what he believes in, a trait he got from his deacon father while watching him advocate for paved roads in Southeast Raleigh. His knack for negotiating came from his mother, who used Sunday dinner as a time to debate the week's news.

What inspires Whitley's efforts is empowering residents to improve their neighborhoods. If you teach someone to do for himself, he says, that person will teach others to do the same.

"Once you give them hope, they begin to figure out what else they can work on," he says.

Whitley doesn't hold a regular job -- he collects a disability benefit -- but he keeps a full schedule of meetings and events. At a recent meeting of the Religious Coalition for a Nonviolent Durham, he continued pushing for support of his bullet issue.

But his real work, he says, is working with the homeless and recovering drug addicts.

"I get more enjoyment and most of my energy out of that," he said. "It relates to my ministry. I like to think of myself as doing all the things a preacher ought to do past Sunday morning."

Where God wants him

Marcia Owen, outreach coordinator for the religious coalition, says Whitley understands the community and realizes the role of public policy in ministry.

"He really lives his life according to the Gospel," she says. "He turns to his neighbors and is unafraid of their sufferings and wants peace and justice."

Whitley became a preacher in 2003. Last Sunday he was ordained a minister at Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church in Durham.

"My life has been this steady progression where I'm finally getting back to the place God intended me to be from the start," he says -- in the ministry and helping the unfortunate.

"He's not afraid of speaking his mind, which I think is good," Durham Mayor Bill Bell says. "He says things we don't want to hear but we need to hear."

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