| The church shared its self-reliance program with the NAACP, providing training in financial literacy, economic empowerment and education as well as, the Rev. Brown said, with cultural exchange, with the arts and in music. “When I think of that, I want to shout to the high heavens that there is more that we have in common than which divides us.” Then came the real surprise for me. The Rev. Brown clearly had studied Latter-day Saint worship and culture. “I see a commonality in the compelling music of both the NAACP and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” he said. “When you look at our national hymns, our national anthem as some call it, ‘Lift every voice and sing, till earth and heaven ring, ring with the harmonies of liberty.’ And I love that verse it says, ‘Stony the row we trod, bitter the chastening rod, felt in the days when hope unborn had died.’ “Then I move over to ‘Come, Come Ye Saints,’ by Clayton: ‘Come, come ye saints, no toil no labor fear, though hard to you this journey may appear, grace shall be as your day. Gird up your loins, fresh courage take, our God will never us forsake. And soon we’ll have this tale to tell. All is well. All is well.’” I exchanged startled glances with my colleagues, Sarah Weaver of the Church News and Boyd Matheson of the Deseret News. “Those two hymns,” the Rev. Brown continued, “those two anthems, are not about military might, or conquest, imperialism. It’s about struggle, it’s about sacrifice, it’s about achieving in spite of oppression. “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was oppressed because of their faith traditions, their beliefs. We were oppressed because of the color of our skins. And both of us have known in our history oppression, denial, been made fun of, because we were different. And I often tell people, they ought to see that we have shown this nation, that is now a cacophony, how there can be harmony, concord and togetherness and seeing that there can be, out of adversity, unity and a salad bowl — not a melting pot — but salad bowl. And America at his best can be good, not great, but can be good, when it realizes that we are called to be a salad bowl. A salad bowl gives us a structure in which the ingredients, the entities, don’t lose their identity.” Boyd would go on to write a column about how much better a metaphor a salad bowl is than a melting pot. Sarah would re-interview the Rev. Brown on camera, so the Church News could publish this video about the two anthems. We all agreed with the Rev. Theresa Dear, who was with us during the original interview with the Rev. Brown. “Now you see why he’s in the Smithsonian, right?” she said, referring to an exhibit about him. She also mentioned he suffered a stroke in 2010. “We prayed as an association that the Lord would spare Dr. Brown and bring him home to us,” she said. “And not only did the Lord bring Dr. Brown back to us safely and strongly, but you know, sometimes when people have a stroke, you know their speech is impaired. Can you tell that the Lord blessed us and bless them? Now he’s a little slower with a cane, but the mind is sharp. We are blessed because of Dr. Brown, and, you know, it is his leadership as the chair of the Religious Affairs Committee that has helped us continue to forge this relationship with the church and to move it beyond San Francisco and Chicago.” Of course, it was the next day when the Rev. Brown introduced President Nelson to the convention as “a brother of another mother” and President Nelson told those in attendance of his prayer “that we may increasingly call each other dear friends.” | 
