As part of National Hunger & Homelessness Awareness Week, our guest speaker for Thursday’s College Chapel is Nelson Johnson, Executive Director of the Beloved Community Center of Greensboro. One of the many facets of the center is its “Homeless Hospitality House,” where all are welcomed and invited to join a process of building authentic community. Each weekday the center welcomes approximately 120 people for meals, a place to rest and other assistance.
Rev. Nelson N. Johnson, Pastor and Founder of Faith Community Church in Greensboro, N.C., has been active in the movement for social and economic justice since high school in the late 1950s. He served as a local and national student leader including Vice President of the SGA at North Carolina A&T State University, in Greensboro, N.C., 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 Nov. 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). 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 1990s 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.