CBH Talk | Partners in the Struggle: Brooklyn NAACP and the Black Church, Part 1
In honor of the 100th anniversary of the Brooklyn Chapter of the NAACP, the Center for Brooklyn History and BKLYN NAACP present this special two-part series on the role of the Black church in the fight for social justice in Brooklyn. Part 1, presented virtually, explores the history.
Part 2, which takes place in-person on February 27, looks at the present and future. Register here.
Photos clockwise from left: Jennifer Jones Austin, Brian Purnell, Rev. Dr. Emma Jordan-Simpson, Prithi Kanakamedala, Clarence Taylor
Join FPWA CEO and Executive Director Jennifer Jones Austin; President of Auburn Theological Seminary and pastor at the Concord Baptist Church of Christ Rev. Dr. Emma Jordan-Simpson; historian Brian Purnell, author of Fighting Jim Crow in the County of Kings: The Congress of Racial Equality in Brooklyn; and historian Clarence Taylor, author of The Black Churches of Brooklyn from the 19th Century to the Civil Rights Era and Knocking At Our Own Door: Milton A. Galamison and the Struggle to Integrate New York City Schools, as they explore the role that Brooklyn’s faith community played in the struggle for political, educational, social, legal, and economic equality. Moderated by historian Prithi Kanakamedala.
Part 2, which will take place in-person on February 27 at 6:30 pm, will look at the continued role of the church in the struggle today and into the future. Register here.
Participants
A fourth-generation leader of faith and social justice, Jennifer Jones Austin fights for equity. As CEO and Executive Director of FPWA, an anti-poverty, policy and advocacy organization with 170 member agencies and faith partners, she has led and secured monumental changes in social policy to strengthen and empower the disenfranchised and marginalized. Jennifer brings to her work a profound understanding of the link between race, poverty, law and social policy in America, and the role religion plays. Ms. Jones Austin is also a radio host, a public speaker, the author of Consider It Pure Joy, and the editor of God in the Ghetto: A Prophetic Word Revisited. She chairs several influential boards and commissions, including the NYC Racial Justice Commission, the first of its kind in the nation tasked with targeting and dismantling structural and institutional racism across the city. She is the Vice Chair of the Board of National Action Network; member of the Feerick Center for Social Justice Advisory Board; member of the Center for Law, Brain and Behavior Advisory Board at Harvard University; and a member of the COVID-19 “Roll Up Your Sleeves” Task Force created to ensure vaccine information and equitable access in Black and brown communities.
The Rev. Dr. Emma Jordan-Simpson is the president of Auburn Theological Seminary. With her appointment in October 2021, she became the first Black woman and non-Presbyterian to lead this leadership development, justice field-building, and research seminary that equips bold and resilient leaders of faith and moral courage to build communities, bridge divides, pursue justice, and heal the world. She is a member of the pastoral team at The Concord Baptist Church of Christ (Brooklyn, NY). Concord reached a milestone when the congregation ordained her in 1989 – the second woman in the church’s history. The first woman was ordained 50 years before in 1939. She is a graduate of Fisk University, Union Theological Seminary, and Drew Theological Seminary. She previously served as Executive Director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, USA; Executive Director of Children’s Defense Fund –New York; Executive Director of Girls Incorporated of New York City; and Executive Vice President of the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation. Rev. Jordan-Simpson is the immediate past President of the Board of American Baptist Churches of Metropolitan New York and serves on the Board of Directors of FPWA, Faith Matters Network, NYC Kids Rise, the Western States Center, and the Brooklyn Community Foundation (emeritus).
Dr. Brian J. Purnell is Associate Professor of Africana Studies and History, and chair of the Africana Studies department at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. His scholarship falls generally within the field of US history with specific concentrations in African American history, urban history, and the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. Born and raised in Coney Island, Brooklyn, much of his work centers around the legacy of racial activism in New York City. His first book, Fighting Jim Crow in the County of Kings: The Congress of Racial Equality in Brooklyn, won the New York State Historical Association’s Dixon Ryan Fox Manuscript Prize. In 2019 he was the co-editor (with Jeanne Theoharis) of The Strange Careers of the Jim Crow North: Segregation and Struggle Outside of the South.
Dr. Clarence Taylor, a Professor of History at Baruch College and the CUNY Graduate Center, was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He attended the public schools of East New York and Canarsie in Brooklyn and received his undergraduate degree from Brooklyn College and his MA from New York University. After graduation from NYU, Taylor embarked on a career as a social studies teacher in New York City’s public schools and pursued a Ph.D. in history at Graduate School of the City University of New York. Among his many publications are The Black Churches of Brooklyn from the 19th Century to the Civil Rights Era; Knocking At Our Own Door: Milton A. Galamison and the Struggle to Integrate New York City Schools; Black Religious Intellectuals: The Fight for Equality from Jim Crow to the 21st Century; Reds at the Blackboard: Communism, Civil Rights and the New York City Teachers Union and Fight th Power: African Americans and the Long History of Police Brutality in New York City. He is also co-editor of Civil Rights Since 1787: A Reader in the Black Struggle, winner of the Gustavus Myers Prize in 2001, and editor of Civil Rights in New York City: From World War II to the Giuliani Era. Prof. Taylor’s research interests are the modern civil rights and black power movements, African-American religion, and the modern history of New York City.
Prithi Kanakamedala is an Associate Professor of History at Bronx Community College CUNY where she teaches courses in U.S. History, African-American History, and the History of New York City. She is also a faculty member in the M.A. in Liberal Studies Program at CUNY Graduate Center. Her research looks at community-building, race, and citizenship in Brooklyn and New York’s 19th-century free Black communities and her work has been supported by a Mellon/ ACLS Community College Faculty Fellowship, PSC Grant, and Gittell Junior Faculty Award.
