Latter-day Saint Life

President Nelson to National NAACP Convention: We Want to Be "Dear Friends"

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"As president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I pray that we may increasingly call each other dear friends. May we go forward doing our best to exemplify the two great commandments — to love God and love each of his children," President Nelson said at the NAACP's 110th national convention. "Arm in arm and shoulder to shoulder, may we strive to lift our brothers and sisters everywhere, in every way we can. This world will never be the same. My dear friends, I thank you." 

President Russell M. Nelson cut short his summer vacation to lock arms with a legendary civil rights activist on Sunday night and declare at the NAACP's 110th national convention that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints wants to become dear friends with the African American community.

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Standing near the spot where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. first delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech on the banks of the Detroit River, President Nelson stood with one of King's students, the Rev. Amos C. Brown, in the midst of a national conversation about racism and xenophobia.

The reverend introduced President Nelson as "a brother from another mother and a brother from another faith tradition and another race" to 3,000 people at the convention's public mass meeting in the Cobo Center near the eastern terminus of the Rosa Parks Memorial Highway.

Lead image by Jeffrey D. Allred, Deseret News; Story by Tad Walch, Deseret News
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