A new 40-minute documentary from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints highlights the experiences of 24 young adults who recently participated in the Amos C. Brown Fellowship to Ghana.
The fellowship is named after the Rev. Dr. Amos C. Brown, who accompanied the group to Ghana. He is the pastor of San Francisco’s Third Baptist Church and member of the Board of Directors of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and a good friend of Church President Russell M. Nelson.
In May 2018, President Nelson announced new initiatives, funding and collaboration with the NAACP, saying, “We are impressed to call on people of this nation, and indeed, the entire world, to demonstrate greater civility, racial and ethnic harmony, and mutual respect.”
Latter-day prophets and apostles repeatedly condemn racism and call for repentance about it, said Elder Ahmad S. Corbitt, a General Authority Seventy who participated in the fellowship to Ghana.
“To see President Nelson’s vision and prophecy and promise of perfect peace and harmony, of bridges, of cooperation instead of walls of segregation, to actually live that and watch it play out before our eyes over these few days has been wonderful,” Elder Corbitt said in the documentary, called “Building Bridges of Faith: The Church and NAACP in Ghana,” which was released on Sunday, March 23 on the Church’s YouTube channel.
Elder Corbitt was joined by Elder Matthew S. Holland, a General Authority Seventy; Sister Tracy Y. Browning, second counselor in the Primary general presidency; and their spouses.
Other NAACP leaders accompanying students to Ghana were Rick Callender, president of the NAACP West Region; the Rev. Devon Jerome Crawford of the Third Baptist Church of San Francisco; and Jonathan Butler, president of the NAACP San Francisco Branch, reported a March 23 news release from ChurchofJesusChrist.org.
Butler said the collaboration between the NAACP and the Church “is really providing an opportunity for the world to see how if we come together any race, ethnicity and get at the root of the oppression and the racism. And I think this trip to Ghana gets us there.”
‘A significant, somber and sacred opportunity’
The fellowship participants were selected from a wide pool of applicants, and are American college students and graduates ages 18-25 of various cultural, racial and religious backgrounds, including Latter-day Saints.
The documentary takes place from Dec. 28, 2024, through Jan. 7, 2025, showing how participants learned many aspects of Ghanaian culture, discovered more about their ancestral heritage and visited places that have a history with the transatlantic slave trade — all working toward becoming ambassadors of peace and harmony. The inaugural fellowship took place in 2022.
Sister Browning called it a “significant, somber and sacred opportunity” to be in West Africa.
“It’s one thing to read about a place,” Sister Browning said. “It’s a completely different experience to be quite immersed in that location — to be there, to smell, to see, to feel and to hear about the lives of people who were deeply impacted by this history that you learned about in a classroom. … It’s immersive. It’s intense.”
The Rev. Crawford said a distinctive moment was when they received names from the Ashanti region of Ghana. They also learned about the importance of Kente cloth, where each pattern, color, design and thread symbolizes a specific value and virtue.
Each person in the group chose a Kente cloth, and Saiida Webb, one of the fellowship participants, said, “It really truly felt like family.”
Learning from the drum beats during another activity, the Rev. Crawford said, ”repairs a breach in the sacred memory for those of us who, for so many generations, were not able to participate in the rituals of our ancestors.”
A poignant excursion for many of the group members came when they dressed in white and walked to the “last bath” at the Assin Manso Ancestral Slave River in Ghana. This is where enslaved people were forcefully bathed and sent on a long walk to slave dungeons and stripped of their names and identities.
At the river, there was an invitation to remove their shoes.
Sister Browning said Exodus 3:5 kept coming to her mind, which says, “Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.”
“There have been a few places in my life that I have gone to and felt that high level of reverence,” Sister Browning said. “And I felt it again when I was in these places in Ghana, these sites where we saw great injustices occur, things that we believe that Jesus Christ can help us heal from.”
Speaking about stepping into the river, Elder Corbitt reflected on how he sees himself foremost as a child of God.
“My sadness is swallowed up in the joy and the hope that comes through Jesus Christ. So it’s a very different feeling that I have,” he said. “I’m urged and inspired to do family history work, not to become angry at others.”
Learnings and takeaways
In the documentary, the young participants spoke of making deeper connections, fostering understanding and experiencing healing. They learned more about identity and capacity, and found themes of repair, restoration and light coming from divide, sorrow and darkness.
Said Brittni Burleigh, “My biggest takeaway from this experience is the reality and possibility of deep connections that can be made with people who have many differences in their lives, different backgrounds, religions, ideas, upbringings.”
Webb has seen the impact of leading with love to foster more community and openness.
“It’s not that everyone needs to have the same idea, have the same belief, go through the same thing, it’s that everyone’s open to listen to understand, and open to acknowledge the roles that they play in causing and receiving hurt,” she said.
Elijah Wion said as he reflected on his experience, the word that came to mind was forgiveness.
“As I was filled with those emotions, the most powerful one was forgiveness because forgiveness was a choice of mine,” Wion said.
He continued: “It is not my job to forgive those who did my ancestors wrong by putting them in those dungeons and in those horrible circumstances. They need to seek forgiveness from my ancestors. But I have forgiveness, and I’m willing to move forward.”
At the end of the documentary, the Rev. Brown speaks to Elder Holland about their relationship. He said when the NAACP and the Church work together for the betterment of humankind, they are able to fulfill what Jesus Christ taught about serving others.
“There’s too much darkness down here,” the Rev. Brown said. “We need to be in lightness. We need to turn the light on. And there’s an old song that says, ’This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine. Everywhere I go, I’m going to let it shine. Jesus gave it to me.‘”
Added the Rev. Brown, “It’s a joy.”
Elder Holland replied: “It is a joy. Thank you.”
The Church and NAACP
The Church and NAACP have worked together during the last several years. In 2017, Latter-day Saints helped refurbish the NAACP offices in Jackson, Mississippi. In May 2018, the First Presidency and NAACP leaders released a joint statement calling for greater civility and racial harmony. Two months later, the Church announced a historic collaboration between the two organizations and launched a self-reliance initiative.
President Nelson spoke at the 110th NAACP annual convention in July 2019. “Arm in arm and shoulder to shoulder, may we strive to lift our brothers and sisters everywhere, in every way we can,” he said.
In June 2020, President Nelson and NAACP leaders wrote a joint opinion piece where they called for racial reform, asking “people everywhere to join us in a journey of understanding and overcoming.”
The next June came the announcement of major education and humanitarian initiatives, including funding for the Ghana fellowship, the first of which took place in July and August 2022.
The NAACP and BYU’s J. Reuben Clark Law School have also worked together on joint projects, and the MyBaby4Me initiative is an effort between the Church and NAACP.
Rev. Brown has been featured in the Church’s Liahona magazine, and he recorded a special video message for President Nelson’s 100th birthday celebration in September 2024.
On that occasion, he spoke about how he introduced President Nelson at the 2019 NAACP National Convention.
“I introduced him as my brother of another mother. And I meant that, because I felt that kindred spirit immediately when I met him, and he came with a track record of leading The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to higher pursuits of racial reckoning, understanding and working to provide a better day for all of God’s children,” the Rev. Brown said.
President Nelson has repeatedly condemned racism of any kind. And he has said of the Rev. Brown, “I like to think that my friend Amos and I are, in a very small way, the embodiment of Dr. [Martin Luther] King’s vision that people from different backgrounds and races can ‘sit down together at the table of brotherhood.‘”
Watch Church News videos about this relationship on YouTube titled “Linking Arms,” “Arm in Arm,” and “All is Well.”
Editor’s note: A previous version of this story did not properly identify Elijah Wion and has now been corrected.
