WorldStage Newsonline– In appreciation of his contribution and promotion of the Civil Rights Movement in the world community, a group of Western and the Diaspora human rights and Christian clergy is set to bestow Rev. Dr. Amos C. Brown with the Global Peace Builder Award on August 31, 2025.
The event, which is holding at San Francisco’s Third Baptist Church, 1399 McAllister Street, San Francisco, United States of America (US), will headline Rev. Ambassador Ladi Peter Thompson, Deputy Secretary General & Director For Peace and Security of AU6RG/ ECASR, as one of the presenters.
According to organizers of the event, Dr. Macaulay Kalu, Secretary General of AU6RG will present Dr. Brown with the Global Peace Builder Award and be supported by Rev. Dr. Freddie Haynes, Senior Pastor of Friendship West Baptist Church in Dallas; Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee, long-time advocate for appropriations to Africa as a congress member; Rick Callendar, California-Hawaii president of the NAACP; Dr. Ike Neliaku, president and chairman of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations; Pastor Ituah Ighodalo, Head of the African Leadership Group and John William Templeton, founder of the Journal of Black Innovation National Black Business Month.
The award is happening as the Third Baptist Church of San Francisco mark its 173rd anniversary on same day with an event steeped in history and global significance. “This year’s commemoration, themed “Achieving Dr. King’s Promised Land Together,” will honor the life-long achievements of Dr. Amos C. Brown, Sr., a towering figure in the Civil Rights Movement, on a day that also observes the International Day for People of African Descent,” the organizers stated in a statement, adding “Brown will be recognized by the African Union’s organ for Africans abroad for ‘planetizing’ the civil rights movement gains at San Francisco’s Third Baptist Church, 1399 McAllister St., at 3 p.m.”
The African Union, made up of 54 countries on the African continent, consists of five regions. It created a sixth region, the African Union Sixth Region Global (AU6RG), for the 400 million Africans living abroad. On Sept. 7, the second AU-Caribbean Community Summit occurs in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Galvanized by the horrific 1955 slaying of Emmett Till, Dr. Brown’s journey in activism began in Jackson, Mississippi, where a neighbor, Medgar Evers, the NAACP’s first field secretary in that state, encouraged Brown to found the Mississippi NAACP Youth Council.
In 1956, Evers personally drove Brown to the NAACP convention in San Francisco, where Brown would first hear Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speak. Brown became a prominent Freedom Rider, later attending Morehouse College and taking the only class Dr. King ever taught there. Thirteen years after Evers was assassinated in Jackson, Brown arrived at Third Baptist Church in 1976, serving with distinction for 49 years before his recent retirement. Under his stewardship, the church solidified its commitment to social justice and international unity.
His Excellency Rev. Ladi Peter Thompson, Deputy Secretary General for Peace and Security of AU6RG, said, “As a mentee of Medgar Evers, Freedom Rider and student of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Dr. Brown is the perfect authority for the young people of the Diaspora on achieving the prophetic goal that Dr. King foresaw in Memphis.”
Lady Dentaa Amoateng, founder of Grow, Unite, Build Africa (GUBA), will also announce that Dr. Brown is an honoree at the GUBA Award in Bridgetown, Barbados in November. The popular actress in Ghana and the United Kingdom will attend in person.
Dr. Lezli Baskerville, president/counsel of the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education, which includes 105 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and 90 predominantly Black institutions (PBIs), invites its students, faculty, and alumni to attend or join remotely.
“HBCUs produced both Dr. King and Dr. Kwame Nkrumah and are the fountainhead for Diaspora unity,” said Baskerville.
Templeton, author of “ReUNION: State of Black Business, 22d edition,” said “Our movement will advocate the continuance of tariff-free treatment for Africa and the Caribbean; respect for African-American and African elected officials and the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments and the strengthening of educational and research connections across the Diaspora.”
Templeton said Black institutions have been at the forefront of defining the image of 1.5 billion Black people globally, a mission that is even more important as African youth will be the majority of the world’s young people in the coming decades.
To accentuate the influence of AU6RG across the global community, another event had previously been held during the 173rd anniversary of the church tagged “Africa-America: Achieving Dr. King’s Promised Land Together.” It’s a Diaspora-wide discussion led by Dr. Brown on what Martin Luther King, Jr. would say today.
The Third Baptist Church was founded on West Indian Emancipation Day on Aug.1, 1852. Third Baptist said in its annual report in 1858 that its sole purpose was the elimination of American chattel slavery and took an active role among the California abolitionists who convinced President Abraham Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation.
The current sanctuary is constructed with wood from the Goodall Mansion, where the U.S. President Grant stayed after leaving the White House, and It’s the last place where Dr. W.E.B. DuBois spoke before leaving for Africa in 1958.
