Amos C. Brown

Amos C. Brown (born February 20, 1941) is an African American pastor and civil rights activist. He is the president of the San Francisco branch of the NAACP, and has been the pastor of the Third Baptist Church of San Francisco since 1976. Brown was one of only eight students who took the only college class ever taught by Martin Luther King Jr.

Early life and education

Brown was born in Jackson, Mississippi in 1941. His great-grandfather was born a slave in Franklin County, Mississippi. Brown's father worked as a rural church pastor and janitor.

In 1955, Brown organized the NAACP's first youth council. He first met Martin Luther King at the 1956 NAACP national convention in San Francisco, which he attended at the invitation of Medgar Evers, who drove Brown there personally.

In 1959, Brown criticized segregated schools in an interview with the Cleveland Plain Dealer. In response, he was barred from returning for his senior year at the then-segregated Jim Hill High School. Medgar Evers, then field secretary of the NAACP, intervened, threatening a lawsuit to force desegregation of a nearby white high school. Brown was let back into Jim Hill, but was no longer allowed to be president of the student council (which was demolished), nor to hold the positions of senior class president or valedictorian that he was elected to by his fellow students.

Brown attended Morehouse College, graduating in 1964, and then entered Crozer Theological Seminary. Martin Luther King wrote one of Brown's recommendation letters, and served as an "unofficial dean" of the black students at the school, his own alma mater. Brown attended a seminar in social philosophy that King co-taught with college minister Samuel Woodrow Williams. Brown was one of only eight students hand-selected for the class.

After earning a master of divinity from Crozer, Brown later went on to receive a doctor of ministry from United Theological Seminary.

Career

Brown became senior pastor of the Third Baptist Church of San Francisco in 1976. He has served as national chairman for the NAACP Youth and College Division and the National Baptist Commission on Civil Rights. He is president of the San Francisco branch of the NAACP. He is also on the board of directors of the NAACP.

In 1991, Brown testified at the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination hearings on behalf of the National Baptist Convention of America, the National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc., and the Progressive National Baptist Convention. He stated that the votes of the conventions were virtually unanimous in their opposition to the nomination of Thomas.

Brown served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors from 1996 to 2001. He was originally appointed by Mayor Willie Brown in 1996, then elected to a two-year term in 1999. He failed to win re-election to the board in the year 2000.

Activism

Brown said in an interview that the origins of the student sit-in movement has been "romanticized... or mis-stated". According to Brown, the first organized "sit-down movement", as it was then referred to, was in Oklahoma City in August 1958, led by the NAACP Youth Council. In 1961, Brown was arrested along with Martin Luther King at a lunch counter sit-in. He also joined the Freedom Riders that year.

Brown is a supporter of LGBT rights. He spoke in favor of the California gay rights bill in 1991. He faced criticism from some black ministers for his support of same-sex marriage and opposition to Proposition 8 in California in 2008. In 2012, he joined the NAACP National Board in voting overwhelmingly in favor of supporting marriage equality.

Brown supports the legalization of marijuana, and has called for more African Americans to have a voice in the medical cannabis industry.

Brown has called for reparations to be paid to black people, to aid in economic empowerment and compensate for deficiencies in education.

Brown volunteered for Operation Crossroads Africa in 1964, spending over two months on the west coast of Africa. He has visited the continent over 20 times since then. Under his leadership, the Third Baptist Church has sponsored many African refugees, and enabled 80 children from Tanzania to receive heart surgery in the United States.

Awards and recognition

• Martin Luther King Jr. Ministerial Award