The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has released a 40-minute documentary which highlights the experiences of 24 young Americans who spent 10 days in West Africa learning to become ambassadors of racial harmony as part of the Amos C. Brown Fellowship to Ghana. The excursion happened from December 28, 2024, through January 7, 2025.
The Amos C. Brown Fellowship is named after Reverand Dr. Amos C. Brown, pastor of San Francisco’s Third Baptist Church and member of the Board of Directors of the NAACP. The organization was powered by the NAACP in collaboration with the Church of Jesus Christ.
In June 2021, Church President Russel M. Nelson pledged $250,000 for initiatives between the two organizations that “represent an ongoing desire of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to teach and live the two great commandments- to love God and neighbor.”
In this excursion, American college students, graduates, young adults and seminarians ages 18-25 and of various religious backgrounds (including Latter-day Saint), cultural and racial backgrounds, were immersed in Ghanaian culture. They learned about their ancestral heritage and the Atlantic slave trade, as well as worked toward becoming social justice leaders and agents of change across the United States.
Church President Russel M. Nelson, who is considered a friend to Reverand Brown, has said repeatedly that racism cannot be tolerated. In a Facebook post he said, speaking of Reverand 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.’”
“You have prophets and apostles repeatedly talking, condemning racism, and calling us to repentance about it,” said Elder Ahmad S. Corbitt, a General Authority Seventy who participated in the experience.
“Unfortunately, we have too many persons who are what I consider to be enslaved to ignorance, misinformation, superstition,” said Reverend Brown, who accompanied the group to Ghana.
Other NAACP leaders who accompanied the students included Rick Callender, president of the NAACP West Region; Devon Jerome Crawford of the Third Baptist Church of San Francisco; and Dr. Jonathan Butler, president of the NAACP San Francisco Branch.
Leaders from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who attended were Elder Matthew S. Holland, a General Authority Seventy; Sister Tracy Y. Browning, Second Counselor in the Primary General Presidency; and Elder Corbitt, as well as their spouses.
Participants dressed in white and walked to the “last bath” at the Assin Manso Ancestral Slave River in Ghana, where enslaved people were forced to bathe and then trek to the Cape Coast Castles slave dungeons, where they were stripped of their identities. At this river, the group members were invited to remove their shoes, as this is now sacred ground.
“It’s one thing to read about a place,” said Sister Browning. “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.”
She also added, “There have been a few places in my life that I have gone to and felt that high level of reverence. 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.”
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