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The Beloved Community Center of Greensboro, North Carolina (BCC) is a community-based, grassroots empowerment-oriented organization rooted in Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s legacy of proactive struggles for racial and economic justice, democracy, and beloved community. The Beloved Community Center was officially founded in 1991 by Rev. Barbara Dua, Assistant Pastor of First Presbyterian Church, Rev. Z. Holler, Pastor of Presbyterian Church of the Covenant, and Rev. Nelson N. Johnson, Pastor of Faith Community Church.

With over fifty years of connected struggle in and around Greensboro, our connection to the social justice movement started long before the Beloved Community Center’s official beginning thirty years ago. Through community building, community organizing, advocacy, and other forms of coalition building, we have continued to pursue our mission and dream of building of an inclusive community that uplifts the dignity, worth and enormous, often unrealized, potential of all.

Our Mission

“Our mission is to forge and continually expand a quality of leadership and beloved community to guide Greensboro, North Carolina, and beyond into a new era of equitable economic sufficiency, peace, social, gender and racial justice that can serve as a model and inspiration for ourselves, our region, our nation and our world.”

Words from Our Executive Directors

“We envision and work toward social and economic relations that affirm and realize the equality, dignity, worth and potential of every person.”

To create a beloved community, a community with the above vision and purpose, one must have leaders who uplift the reimagination of our society and prioritize the voices of those most often marginalized. Beloved Community Center is blessed to be guided by such leaders, Rev. Nelson Johnson and Mrs. Joyce Johnson.

 

The Fierce Urgency of Now

We are a deeply, bitterly divided nation. The great challenge of our time is to grow a culture of truth, justice, healing and reconciliation throughout our society. We, the people, must strive to walk toward each other, seeking deep truths, promoting mutual understanding and growing sincere unity. The Beloved Community Center of Greensboro (BCC) has chosen to focus on forging a statewide Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation Commission Process (NCTJRC), a process that has the potential to commend itself to the nation. We have already begun this work.

The American Heritage dictionary defines truth as “the body of real things, events, or facts.” Truth is the ultimate glue that holds our reality together. No people, society, or nation can long endure if it continues to massively violate truth. One deeply human truth is that we are all called to honor the dignity, worth, and potential of each person and all peoples, as well as the Earth itself. The failure to do so causes on-going conflict and violence, and ultimately lays the foundation for civil war. In the spirit of unity, the BCC encourages and supports the many other social justice movements that are life-affirming, including reparations. The Beloved Community Center will require about $6 million over a three-year period to effectively carry out a high quality NC-TJRC process, while modeling and contributing to similar efforts around the nation. We ask for your moral and financial support. We ask that you make a generous contribution or, even better, a monthly pledge. Thank you, and let us continue to walk toward each other.

– Reverend Nelson Johnson and Joyce Johnson

Board of Directors

Pat Priest, Dale Tonkins, Deborah Underwood, Steve Sumerford, Cherrell Brown, Vanessa Kirsch, Sylvia Clapp-White, Darryl Lester, Tinisha Shaw, Alaine Duncan, Keith Bullard, Rev. Steve Allen, Sherry Giles, Haydyn Foulke, Atty. Dayna Cunningham, Jennifer Henderson, Emeritus, Juanita Brown, Rev. Steve Allen, Atty. Jason Keith, Emeritus, Carolyn Allen

Nelson Johnson | Beloved Community Center

Rev. Nelson Johnson

Co-Executive Director

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Mrs. Joyce Johnson

Co-Executive Director

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Brigette E. Rasberry

Operations Officer

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Brenda Addison

Office Manager

Terence “TC” Muhammad

Hip-Hop Caucus Liason

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Rev. Wesley Morris

Rev. Wesley Morris

Southern Vision Alliance Liaison

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Headshot - Fidel E Benton, black man smiling in gray suit with pink tie

Fidel E. Benton

Communications Officer

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Lewis A. Brandon III

Director of the Grassroots History Project

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info@belovedcommunitycenter.org
(336) 230-0001

417 Arlington Street, 
Greensboro, NC 27406

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Nelson Johnson has been active in the movement for social and economic justice since high school in the late 1950’s. He served as a student leader Student Government Association at A&T State University, in Greensboro, NC in 1970. Between high school and college Rev. Johnson served four years in the United States Air Force. He continues to work for social and economic justice in Greensboro as Pastor of Faith Community Church and Executive Director of The Beloved Community Center of Greensboro.

Though involved in a myriad of initiatives, Rev. Johnson centers his efforts on facilitating a process of comprehensive community building, which include a convergence of racial and ethnic diversity, social and economic justice, and genuine participatory democracy. At the Beloved Community Center, he and his colleagues attempt to bring together the homeless, the imprisoned, impoverished neighborhoods, and other disenfranchised groups in the spirit of mutual support and community.

Guided by his three-part emphasis of diversity, justice and democracy, Rev. Johnson is actively building relationships with and providing leadership within organized labor, faith groups and other public and private community organizations. He and other local ministers of the Greensboro Pulpit Forum led an active support effort in 1997 that resulted in a significant contract settlement for workers at the Greensboro K-Mart Distribution Center. As a result, he is frequently invited to share that success story at workshops and meetings, including those sponsored by the George Meany Labor Institute, the AFL-CIO of New York, and the Michigan AFL-CIO.

Because of his extensive experience in community organizing and socio-political analysis, Rev. Johnson is routinely invited to speak on university campuses around the country to share his vision of community building. He has written articles for the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Labor and Employment Law and The Witness Magazine, published by the National Episcopal Church. Rev. Johnson is also a former Contributing Editor for the Black Scholar Magazine, National Chair and Contributing Editor for the African World Newspaper, and Assistant Editor for the Carolina Peacemaker of Greensboro, NC.

Rev. Johnson is a native of Halifax County, NC. He received a baccalaureate degree in political science from North Carolina A&T State University and a Master of Divinity Degree from the School of Theology at Virginia Union University. He is married to Joyce Hobson Johnson, a retired research director and School of Business and Economics faculty member at A&T who now works side by side with Johnson at the BCC. The Johnsons have two adult daughters, Akua Johnson-Matherson, a university administrator and Ayo Johnson, a registered nurse and certified recreational therapist. Rev. Johnson and Joyce are also the proud grandparents of three granddaughters, Alise, Imani and Nia and one grandson, Nelson Josiah.

Joyce Johnson’s activism began as a high school student in Richmond, VA during the 1960s struggle for civil rights and open accommodations. She deepened her involvement in college as one of the earlier black students at Duke University and while supporting campus non-academic employees and the movement for relevant education. A former university professor and research director, Joyce is currently Director of the Jubilee Institute, a community-based leadership development and training entity. Joyce assisted the Beloved Community Center of Greensboro (BCC) in developing the Jubilee Institute to provide institutional support, social and political analysis, training, and leadership development for the broad-based progressive movement in that city. Joyce also serves on the North Carolina NAACP State Executive Board, the Guilford Education Alliance Board, and the Faith Community Church Council.

Though officially “retired,” Joyce, the BCC and the Greensboro Justice Fund joined with other Greensboro residents in 2001 to establish
the pace-setting Truth and Community Reconciliation Project. Modeled after the South African process and other international efforts, this initiative is designed to encourage truth, understanding, and healing throughout Greensboro related to the tragic murder of five labor and racial justice organizers by Ku Klux Klan and American Nazi Party members on November 3, 1979. Joyce and her husband, the Rev. Nelson N. Johnson, play a leading role in this ground-breaking model for community problem-solving. The Johnsons were recognized for their work in 2005 by both the prestigious Ford Foundation “Leadership for a Changing World Award” and by the Faith and Politics Institute of Washington, DC “Beloved Community Award.” In 2008 the couple received the “Purpose Prize Award” from Civic Ventures of Palo Alto, California and the “Defenders of Justice Award” from the North Carolina Justice Center of Raleigh. In 2009, they were recognized by the Association for Conflict Resolution as recipients of the “Diversity and Equity Award.”

In her community and church, Joyce has been active in a myriad of grassroots efforts to improve housing, employment practices, education, healthcare, women’s issues and support for African liberation struggles. Organizational affiliations have included the Afro American Society at Duke University (founding member and Co-Chair), Black Student Movement at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Student Organization for Black Unity (SOBU), the African World Newspaper, the National Black Political Party, the Voter Education Project, the NAACP, the Coalition to Free the Wilmington 10, the African Liberation Support Committee, the Greensboro Association of Poor People, the Citizens Committee Against Police Brutality, the Southern Faith, Labor and Community Alliance, and
the Beloved Community Center of Greensboro.

In conjunction with her husband, Joyce has dedicated almost 40 years to bringing about significant social and economic changes in Greensboro, NC and throughout the United States. The Johnsons have two adult daughters, Akua Johnson-Matherson, a university administrator, and Ayo Johnson, a registered nurse and certified recreational therapist. They are also the proud grandparents of four grandchildren, Nia, Imani, Alise, and Nelson Josiah.

Join the Beloved Community Center (BCC) in welcoming Brigette E. Rasberry as the newest member of their staff. Brigette comes to the organization with more than 20 years of experience in executive leadership, 13 of which were spent as Operations Officer of a statewide trade association. In that role she formed an array of key statewide relationships and honed many of the skills that will help BCC to successfully enhance its administration and grow its programming across the state of NC, and beyond. In addition, Brigette has demonstrated repeatedly an ability to quickly learn new things, adapt that which she knows to new situations and develop processes by which others can successfully follow. Most importantly Brigette shares BCC’s belief in the inherit goodness and worth of all people. Both her professional and personal life have been spent trying to attain the same principles of truth, justice, and equity that BCC fights for every day. She has served in various leadership capacities, each time demonstrating a commitment to ensure all people can be heard and have an opportunity to have their needs met while also freely, without roadblocks, pursue their hopes and aspirations.

Brigette is a graduate of Saint Augustine’s College in Raleigh, NC with a degree in Organizational Management. She has obtained numerous professional certifications, but most notably has a specialty in Outcome/Performance and Capacity Assessment. She is a proud mother of one son, who is a NC A&T State University Alumni and has two adorable granddaughters. Brigette’s personal motto is, “to whom much is given, much is required.” It is that Servant-Leader spirit, along with her wealth of administrative and programmatic success that have the board and staff of the Beloved Community Center so excited to have her aboard.

 

Terence “TC” Muhammad has been a community activist and organizer for over two decades. His experience spans voter mobilization campaigns, issue advocacy, and coalition building in African American communities, faith communities, on college campuses, and among civil rights and progressive organizations.

Wesley Morris is a dedicated coach, facilitator, community organizer, minister and internationally recognized thought leader who uses his dynamic speaking talents to inspire all who have the opportunity to hear his voice. His work for more than a decade with the Beloved Community Center of Greensboro, home of the nation’s first “Community Truth and Reconciliation Process” uniquely positions him to guide those interested in intergenerational learning, historical archiving and community organizing.

 

His work with international travel projects in countries such as Cuba, Barbados and Brazil, have opened cultural and spiritual pathways for communities that would otherwise not have the opportunity or access to such rich experiences. Over the course of his career, he has continuously proven himself to be a catalyst for positive change in the community by helping people from diverse backgrounds embrace forgiveness and peace.

Wesley is a graduate of North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University and Union Theological Seminary (NYC). In high-pressure situations he pulls from his formal training and practical experience to unlock clarity for those who are seeking to change the world we live in. Mr. Morris is the Senior Pastor of Faith Community Church. When asked about his call to ministry, Wesley emphatically says, “I am here to drive strategic community building and influence transformative justice movements for all people.” Also, as a member of the DreamCatchers network, he uses his experiences to build those who are seeking to adjust or reinvent their self-identity.

Fidel E. Benton is a designer, talented DJ, passionate about current political & MCU affairs, and yes, host of The Fidel Emmanuel Podcast. A Fayetteville, NC native, he graduated from Fayetteville State University in 2014, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications. His development and involvement in organizations such as the Student Government Association, Bronco-iRadio.com, and United Voices of Praise, the FSU Gospel Choir fuels his love for HBCU communities and legacies. 

 

With a passion for project management and storytelling, Fidel has served in senior roles, including Marketing Manager at Raleigh Little Theatre, Director of Marketing & Communications at Robeson Community College, and Assistant Director of Marketing & Communications at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University.

 

Lewis Brandon is a native of Asheville, North Carolina and a retired science teacher from the public schools of Guilford County. Brandon was a student organizer during the early 1960s while he was an undergraduate student at North Carolina A&T State University. Brandon was one of the founders of the Greensboro Association of Poor People in 1968, was active in the formation of the Greensboro Community Truth and Reconciliation Project in 1991 and the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2004. Currently Brandon serves as the Director of Beloved Community Center’s Grassroots History Project.