Rev. E. E. Brown

The Rev. Egbert Ethelred Brown

Egbert Ethelred Brown was born in Falmouth, Trelawny, on 11 July, 1875. His parents, James and Florence, were members of a highly respected family in St. James, where his father became a member of the Parochial Board. He was the eldest of five children; one of his brothers, Walter Lancelot, became a prominent Anglican missionary in West Africa, and later, a Kingston clergyman. He showed every prospect of having a successful career in the Civil Service, but by 1907 he had made the momentous decision to go to the United States to study theology and be ordained into the Unitarian Church.

Since his early teens he had rejected the Trinitarian doctrines of the mainstream churches and had decided that only Unitarianism represented his religious beliefs. The Unitarian church in the USA which Brown joined, apart from rejecting the doctrine of the divinity of Jesus, stated its position as accepting ‘the religion of Jesus, holding, in accordance with his teaching, that practical religion is summed up in love to God and love to man.’ In the many references to Brown’s Unitarian ideas in the Jamaican press, it is clear that this was the belief that he held.

He arrived in the United States in September 1910 and began his studies at the Unitarian Theological School in Meadville, Pennsylvania. Ethelred Brown was ordained a Unitarian minister in 1912. He returned to Jamaica in 1912 and spent two years in Montego Bay (1912-14) and six (1914-20) in Kingston trying to establish a Unitarian church in Jamaica: the American Unitarians were ambivalent about this effort, because at that time there were very few Black Unitarians, and only gave him limited and grudging support. In Kingston he was able to attract members and regularly held meetings and services, often in the Victoria Park.

Victoria Park/Parade Gardens pre-1914

During those years he was also involved in many other organisations in Jamaica, including the Montego Bay Literary and Debating Society, the Jamaica League, the Liberal Association and the U. N. I. A. His relationship with Garvey was always uneasy and later he was a staunch opponent of the Garvey movement. He became an acknowledged spokesman on labour issues in Jamaica and in 1919 the Journal of Negro History published his article ‘Labor Conditions in Jamaica Prior to 1917’.

By 1920 he was unable, because of financial constraints, to continue his mission in Jamaica and decided to go to Harlem to set up a Unitarian church there. His wife and children also went to live in Harlem; there, his struggles, and his total devotion to his beliefs, resulted in considerable hardships for the whole family. Brown's church in Harlem never had a large membership and he continued to have serious difficulties in his relationship with the Unitarian Church authorities. However his church was an important centre for debate on current issues in the community and Brown, along with other West Indians, was a strong voice for progressive opinion.

He was in fact one of the founding members of the Jamaica Progressive League and for some 20 years its Secretary. He represented the League before the Moyne Commission in 1938. He also became an important supporter and fund-raiser for the P.N.P. in the United States. He worked closely with Norman Manley and visited Jamaica in the summer of 1952 in the aftermath of the expulsion of four leading left-wingers. When he died in 1956 appreciation for his work was expressed in obituaries in Jamaican newspapers.