Arthur Brazier

He was born July 22, 1921, on the south side of Chicago. He attended Douglas Elementary School and Wendell Phillips High School in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood. A World War II veteran with two Battle Stars for the North Burma and Central Burma campaigns, he was inducted into the United States Army in 1942 and served for three years. On February 21, 1948, he joined in holy matrimony to Esther Isabelle Holmes, daughter of Lola and Leon Holmes. In sixty-two years of marriage, they became parents to Lola, Byron, Janice, and Rosalyn, grandparents to seven and great-grandparents to eleven. Not long after answering God’s call to ministry, Elder Brazier became the assistant pastor of Universal Church of Christ following his mother’s death in 1949. He became the pastor in 1952. He enrolled at Moody Bible Institute in 1955 to gain “a greater understanding of the Bible” to become a more effective teacher and preacher. In 1960, he was asked by Deacon Gerald Nuckolls and Elder Robert J. McGee to pastor the Apostolic Church of God, a small congregation with which his church shared space. In 1976, Elder Brazier became Bishop Brazier when he was elevated to the office of Diocesan Bishop in the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World. He was assigned to the Sixth Episcopal District (Illinois District Council), which included oversight of more than eighty churches when he resigned from the PAW in 2007. As committed as Bishop Brazier was to his life as a pastor, he recognized early in his life a need for being actively involved in the civic life of Chicago. Bishop Brazier began his community work with the Industrial Areas Foundation under the tutelage of Saul Alinsky and Nicholas Von Hoffman. In 1961, while working with Saul Alinsky, he founded The Woodlawn Organization (T.W.O.). He served as T.W.O.’s president for nine years. In 1966, he invited Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to Chicago, and together they protested against segregation in housing and education. Bishop Brazier was appointed to the Board of the Public Building Commission of Chicago in 1986, and he held that position until September 2010.