(RNS) — The Rev. Amos C. Brown is a civil rights veteran and onetime student of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Brown is the namesake of a fellowship that has brought young adults to Ghana with leaders of the NAACP and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to learn the history of slavery.
Now, the 82-year-old senior pastor of San Francisco’s Third Baptist Church is vice chair of California’s Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans, which is set to release its final report on Thursday (June 29).
“If anyone says ‘Y’all don’t deserve nothing. Stop complaining. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps,’” he said, “I contend they are heartless and they don’t know anything about that dictum that’s found in all of the world religions. What is that dictum?: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
Brown, Third Baptist’s senior pastor since 1976, is particularly proud that his historic church affiliated with the National Baptist Convention, USA, and the American Baptist Churches USA, was the site of the first in-person public meeting of the task force.
At its most recent meeting, held in Oakland, the task force recommended monetary compensation be part of the reparations that state officials consider when they receive the task force’s final report.
Brown, the president of the San Francisco NAACP, spoke with Religion News Service about his work with the task force, the history of racism in the U.S. and his hopes for reparations in the country.
The interview was edited for length and clarity.
Do you consider your work as vice chair of the reparations task force to be an unusual step for a clergyperson or a fitting one?
It’s a fitting one. Jesus of Nazareth, according to Luke 4, went into that synagogue and stood up to read and what did he talk about? He talked about liberating people from oppression, from sickness. He talked about the acceptable year of the Lord and what was the acceptable year? Paying back debts.
Harm has been done to Black folks by this nation. And it’s time for us to respond and not react but respond in a responsible, rational, realistic way that will give us results to bring Black folks from the bottom of the well economically, academically, healthwise.
People listen to the California reparations task force, a nine-member committee studying restitution proposals for African Americans, at a meeting at Lesser Hall in Mills College at Northeastern University in Oakland, Calif., on May 6, 2023. (AP Photo/Sophie Austin)
Have many Black churches spoken out in favor of reparations in your state?
I spoke to ministers down in Los Angeles, up here in San Francisco. No Black faith leader who really is following Jesus of Nazareth — or even those who are in the Nation of Islam — in his or her best thinking would say reparations were not needed.
