Marilyn Baird

marilynb@belovedcommunitycenter.org

Marilyn is a longtime labor organizer who directs the economic justice programs of the Beloved Community Center of Greensboro. Her duties include coordinating the Worker’s Rights Center and the Southern Faith and Labor Community Alliance.

A native of Greensboro who lived many years in Washington, D.C., Marilyn spent 15 years as southeast director of the Communications Workers of America. After retiring from that position, she was the organizing director of Grassroots Leadership’s privatization of prisons project.

Passionate about the need for workers to use democracy to take control of their own lives and working conditions, she is co-chair of Greensboro’s Minimum Wage Campaign, which is using the electoral process to increase the city’s minimum wage.

She is an active member of New Hope Missionary Baptist Church, where she serves as the church hostess and as the staff person for the nonprofit New Hope Community Development Group. A mother of four and grandmother of seven, she lives in Greensboro with her husband Lawrence Baird.

Lewis Brandon

lewisb@belovedcommunitycenter.org

Lewis A. Brandon, III, a native of Asheville, NC and a retired science teacher, is the Grassroots History Coordinator at the Beloved Community Center.

Brandon, as his friends call him, was a student organizer during the early 1960s when he was matriculating at North Carolina A&T College and played a key role in formulating protest strategies during the civil rights demonstrations as a member of the Student Executive Committee for Justice.

Brandon’s activism did not stop during the 1960s. He continued in the struggle for social, political and economic justice in his community through CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), NAACP, American Friends Service Committee’s College Committee and the Greensboro Association of Poor People. Brandon was vice chairman of Forecast 2015, Guilford County’s long range planning process and a founding member of the Piedmont Land Conservancy. He served as a board member to the Governor’s Waste Management Board and the NC Board of Licensing for Geologists. In addition, Brandon served on the Guilford County Watershed Study Committee, the Guilford County Well Water Rules Committee, and the Guilford County Parks Commission.

In 1986, he was elected and continues to serve on the Guilford Soil and Water District Board of Supervisors. An amateur photographer, Brandon’s works have appeared in numerous publications.

Rev. Nelson Johnson

nelsonj@belovedcommunitycenter.org

Rev. Nelson N. Johnson, Pastor and Founder of Faith Community Church in Greensboro, NC, has been active in the movement for social and economic justice since high school in the late 1950’s. He served as a local and national student leader including Vice President of the SGA at North Carolina A&T State University, in Greensboro, NC in 1970. As a student leader, he worked closely with the local NAACP on voter registration, redevelopment, housing, education, open public accommodations and worker justice. Both survivors of the November 3, 1979 tragedy, he and his wife, Joyce, helped initiate and continue to be instrumental in the groundbreaking Greensboro Truth and Community Reconciliation Project (GTCRP). He continues to work for social and economic justice in Greensboro as the Executive Director of The Beloved Community Center of Greensboro. In addition, he is Vice-President of the Greensboro Pulpit Forum and Co-Chairperson of the Chicago-based Interfaith Worker Justice.

Guided by his multiple emphases of faith, diversity, justice and democracy, Rev. Johnson is actively building relationships with and providing leadership among faith groups, organized labor, and community organizations in Greensboro and the south in the form of the Southern Faith, Labor and Community Alliance. Some of the most significant initiatives he has been involved with in Greensboro have been the successful K-Mart labor struggle in the late 1990’s and two current initiatives, the historic Greensboro Truth and Community Reconciliation Process and the Justice at Smithfield Workers Campaign. Rev. Johnson and his wife Joyce were recognized for their work through the prestigious Ford Foundation Leadership for a Changing World Award. Rev. Johnson is a native of Halifax County, NC.

Rev. Johnson 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, and they have two daughters, Ayo Samori Johnson, a registered nurse and certified recreational therapist, and Akua Johnson‐Matherson, a university administrator. Rev. Johnson and Joyce are also the proud grandparents of three granddaughters, Alise, Imani and Nia Matherson.

Joyce Johnson

joycej@belovedcommunitycenter.org

A mother and a grandmother, Joyce Hobson Johnson is the Director of the Jubilee Institute of the Beloved Community Center.

Joyce’s activism began as a high school student in Richmond, VA during the 1960s struggle for civil rights and open accommodations. Joyce deepened her involvement in college while supporting non-academic employees on campus and the movement for relevant education at Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

A former university professor and transportation and logistics research director at North Carolina A&T State University. Joyce and others established the pace-setting Greensboro Truth and Community Reconciliation Project in 2001. Modeled after the South African process, 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.

The Johnsons were recognized for their work in 2005 through the prestigious Ford Foundation “Leadership for a Changing World Award” and the Faith and Politics Institute of Washington, DC “St. Joseph Day Award.” The Johnsons have two daughters, Akua and Ayo Samori and three granddaughters.

Kathleen Jordan

kathleenj@belovedcommunitycenter.org

Arletha Jowers

arlethaj@belovedcommunitycenter.org

Arletha is a Community Educational Organizor at the Beloved Community Center. She volunteers in the Guilford County Schools as a student and teacher advocate and coordinates New Voice, a youth group geared toward social justice.

A native of Winston-Salem, Arletha is the proud mother of Ciyon and the wife of Brandon Jowers.

Kyle Lambelet

kylel@belovedcommunitycenter.org

Kyle is media, communications and arts coordinator for the Beloved Community Center. A native of Wichita, Kansas he and his partner Nicole came to Greensboro as interns with Word & World, a small nonprofit that seeks to provide education, training, and capacity-building for Christian disciples dedicated to the work of social transformation.

He previously worked as a resident volunteer and as part of the Martin Luther King Campaign for Economic Justice at the Open Door Community, an intentional Christian community in Atlanta, Ga. Working primarily with homeless neighbors, Kyle was active in responding both to immediate needs of hunger and shelter as well as systemic oppression that led to such needs in the first place.

He has a bachelor’s degree in biblical studies and theology from Azusa Pacific University in Azusa, California. Using his theological education as a frame, Kyle began his work as an organizer mobilizing fellow students to be active in social justice campaigns, particularly against the Iraq war.

Currently a member of Faith Community Church, where he sings in the choir, Kyle is an amateur musician. Though he only has nine and a half fingers, he still enjoys picking on the banjo and singing folks songs with friends.

Demetria Ledbetter

demetrial@belovedcommunitycenter.org

Erica Mayo

ericam@belovedcommunitycenter.org

Erica Mayo is a native of Greenville, North Carolina. She came to Greensboro to attend North Carolina A&T State University and graduated with a degree in Child Development and Family Studies. She is a community organizer and works with the Education Working Group at the BCC. She organizes out of the belief that the community is resposible for empowering all children to reach their greatest potential.

Terry Speed

terrygspeed@hotmail.com

Terry Speed is a native of Greensboro, North Carolina. A mother of two, grandmother of seven, and great-grandmother of two. Terry coordinates the Homeless Hospitality House at the BCC. Her work includes helping neighbors obtain identification cards, so they can find jobs, services, and medical care, she provides clothing and oversees showers, she cooks some of the tastiest meals in Greensboro four times a week. She is also a deacon and usher at Faith Community Church. Terry, or Miss Terry as she is called by many friends and neighbors, has dedicated her life to ensure that all she meets will not go without the most basic necessities of food, clothing, shelter, and most importantly friendship.

Ed Whitfield

ewhitfield.fdc@gmail.com

Ed Whitfield is executive director of the Fund for Democratic Communities, as well as a social critic, writer and community activist who works closely with and is on the board of the Beloved Community Center.

Along with other activities and his “day” job as a second-shift electronics technician in a Greensboro factory, he recently played a prominent role in the establishment of the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

After graduating as a Presidential Scholar from Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas in the late 60s, he went on to Cornell University. In 1968, he was among black students who held a successful, nonviolent demonstration to demand a black studies curriculum for the university. A Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph shows Ed and other armed students peacefully ending the protest.

Ed lectures on issues of education and racism, has hosted a weekly radio talk show and has written an iconoclastic regular newspaper column on community, education and peace/justice issues. He has written a collection of essays on the 9/11 attacks and the issues of war and justice, as well as a book on school diversity that is currently used by graduate students in the School of Education at N.C. A&T State University. He currently is working on a book re-examining school integration in the light of the current discourse on “re-segregation.” He can also be found on weekends playing jazz flute or blues guitar along with local bands.