A Conversation with Rev. Jeffrey Brown: Race in America and Today's Black Lives Matter Movement
Rev. Brown, a Baptist minister, has for years helped cities and police departments across the country address youth violence and develop plans to make communities safer and fairer. Today those stakes are as great as they have ever been.
That's the backdrop of Rev. Brown's discussion of race and his current project to convene a second national conference of faith leaders and law enforcement and hold a national conversation on the importance of faith institutions in public safety.
Rev. Brown, who has presented to the Jefferson several times, including in 2020, was a central figure in the "Boston Miracle," which succeeded in significantly lowering youth crime and gang violence in Boston's most troubled neighborhoods. His message of working within stressed communities rather than from an authority perspective has resonated with people of all faiths, races, and occupations. Famously, he once said he learned some of his most important life lessons, not in the "hallowed halls of a seminary," but from drug dealers, prostitutes, and gang members.
He is co-founder of the Boston Ten Point Coalition, the group that inspired a 79 percent drop in violent crime in the 1990s.
Rev. Jeffrey Brown is the president of RECAP (Rebuilding Every Community Around Peace), a national organization that helps cities build partnerships between the faith-based community, government and law enforcement agencies to reduce gang violence. He is one of the co-founders of the Boston Ten Point Coalition, a faith-based group that was an integral part of the “Boston miracle,” a process through which the city experienced a 79% decline in violent crime in the '90s, and spawned countless urban collaborative efforts in subsequent years that followed the Boston Ceasefire model. He served as its Executive Director from 2005 to 2013.
Rev. Brown consults to municipalities and police departments nationwide on issues around youth violence and community mobilization. His current project is to convene a second national conference of faith leaders and law enforcement, and facilitate a national conversation on the importance of faith institutions in public safety.
