John Brown And The African

John Brown and the African-American Community

What is the relation of the life and sacrifice of John Brown to the present African-American Community? How much does his life of dedication to the freeing of slaves and his consequent death in the attempt, resonate in the African-American community at the present time. Is his remembrance of any consequence to the Black community of the present day? And if remembered at all by the Community at large, does his life carry an import to the continued struggle for equality? Anniversaries provide unusual opportunities to draw attention and stimulate interest in historic figures and events. A century and a half after his death, John Brown remains one of the most controversial figures in American history. On December 2, 1859, John Brown was hanged. In relation to the broader context of slavery, the abolitionist movement, and the American civil rights movement, what is the memory of John Brown’s attempt to consider and execute a raid on a military installation to free slaves in the hope of their participation on a national level to stamp out slavery in the entire nation? Is there any recollection of his events at all among the African-American community today? Is there a communitarian spirit among Black peoples that still exists—in particular with the insurrection today of a black man as President? “Last week, the Pew Research Center published the astonishing finding that 37 percent of African

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Americans polled felt that ‘blacks today can no longer be thought of as single race’ because of a widening class divide”1 Has his life and adventures been purloined only to fabricate and manufacture a national park service installation? Or is it something more? If violence is the criteria for freedom of slavery—what is to be the conclusion of Malcolm X’s—by any means necessary? Do we have any instances of AfricanAmerican community’s reprisal and retrofitting the execution of John Brown? To what extent can the present African-American community indulge in a forgetfulness of the hanging of John Brown and maintain a rigorous growth and expansion of Black progress without paying tribute, or the least, acknowledgment of the importance of Brown’s death. By

deploying a range of analytical registers to deal with John Brown’ hanging,

the present mood of the African American community, in situ, I propose to investigate, and come up with conclusions that show the need to look at the African American attitude today and its relevant icon John Brown. Or as David S. Reynolds writes in the subtitle to his book: “John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man who killed slavery, sparked the Civil War, and seeded Civil Rights.”2

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Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. 18 November 2007. The New York Times. “Dispatches from the Editor in Chief” Oxford African American Studies Center; The online authority on the African American experience. New York Times, 18 November 2007. Reprinted with permission. Archived:4/23/2009, at: http://www.oxfordaasc.com/public/letters/letter_2.jsp/

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Reynolds, David S. 2005. John Brown, Abolitionist. NY: Alfred A. Knopf. Title page.

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Malcolm X and the black liberation movement: “by any means necessary”

“We are not here at this [Harlem] rally because we have already gained freedom. No!!! We are gathered here rallying for the freedom which we have long been promised, but have as yet not received.”3 The radicalism that Malcolm X required of the African Americans to free themselves of Americanism is the same radical element that forged John Brown and hit raid on Harpers Ferry, VA., in 1859. The same limitations and possibilities of the Negro situation in the 1800s that John Brown viewed were similar to those that Malcolm X saw in the 1900s. Malcolm was a key figure in the change from civil rights to black power4 John believed that similar circumstances obtained in the 1850s.

Freedom for black Americans in the first-half of the 19th century had several champions. Among them was the abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison.5 Garrison founded a newspaper, The Liberator, and distributed widely throughout the country particularly in the North. His abolitionist approach 3

Black Liberation Movement, in, We Are Not What We Seem, by Rod Bush. NY & London: 1999. p. 212. 4 Racial Formation in the United State: From the 1960s to the 1990s. (1994) 2nd ed., Omi, Michael and Howard Winant. Routledge: NY & London. p. 103. 5

Garrison was also a pacifist and involved in other reform movements. He was deeply convinced that slavery had to be abolished by moral force. http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761559647/William_Lloyd_Garrison.html

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could be termed a quiet and gradual one to the emancipation of Negro slaves at the time. Garrison’s approach was of a pacifist nature to free the Negro. But even for him he was dissatisfied with the lack of momentum of emancipation of all enslaved African Americans. ‘Moral force’ would not solve quickly or completely, the horror of slavery in the United States.

Brown, who had consulted with Garrison on several occasions, could see that the abolitionist and peaceful movement to free slaves was no progressing fast enough for John Brown. Garrison, himself was discouraged with the slow movement of Negro Emanicipation. What would be named civil rights demands today or in the 1960s, John Brown called civil rights for all peoples God‘s demands for justice and equality. His letters and his pronouncements upon the issue of slavery show his anger and impatience at the continuing strange longevity of this despicable chain of events: slavery in the United States. John Brown’s mission to eradicate the ‘peculiar institution’ of slavery was God-given to him personally. For Brown, Emanicipation was more than a political vision—to see the States united—and even more than a moral force to bring together whites and blacks and all others.

Brown’s charismatic and emotional appeals for freedom of blacks even garnered the support even in the “hotbed of transcendentalism” (such as Concord, Mass.)6Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Thoreau and Ellery Channing, 6

His Soul Goes Marching On: Responses to John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid. (1995).Finkelman, Paul (Ed). Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia. p.23.

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along with townspeople of Concord, fell at his feet when listening declaims slavery. In public declamations and in poetry and editorials, Brown’s purposes for violent overthrow of the institution of slavery, all helped turn the country into two camps—one free, the other enslaved. He accepted his trial and eventual execution as more favorable sign for the elimination of slavery: “I am worth now infinitely more to die than to live” he had told his brother.7

John Brown and African Americans The moral force of abolitionism did not carry the day for long. Even William Lloyd Garrisonwas ready to give the peaceful procedures to anti-slavery and contemplate a more violent approach to rid the nation of slavery. The violent approach had rid the Kansas-Missouri territories of the free-states vs. the slave-states. In New England more work had to be done. Brown acted—or believed he was acting—on behalf of enslaved African Americans, although in fact he had little contact with African Americans.8 But this is not the current view of John Brown among African Americans. From the beginning of the contacts between blacks and whites, there has been very little reason for a black man to respect a white, with such exceptions as John Brown and other lesser known9

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Finkelman, op. cit .p 45. Finkelman, p. 301. 9 Soul on Ice (1968). Eldridge Cleaverp.82-83, As Quoted in Blacks on John Brown (1972) Benjamin Quarles (Ed) Chicago: Univ. of Illinois press, p. 107. 8

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Among other African Americans who praised John Brown was Malcolm X, whom in January 1965 Said: I don’t go for any nonviolent white liberals…If you are for me and my problems— When I say me I mean us, our people—then you have to b e willing to do as old John Brown did10 What is the revolutionary posture necessary to beget equal rights for all Americans? Nor is the rebellious nature of John Brown that of a revolutionary. His was a religious rebellion to spearhead a revolutionary to free the enslaved Negro. John Brown was thought by many, even among his friends, to be insane. But an exhibition of such insanity was required to arouse the nation against the crime of slavery and to bring on the civil war.11

Even though—‘insane’--Abraham Lincoln had his doubts about John Brown’s Harpers Ferry raid, he (Lincoln) could joke about the disastrous Raid. On December 2, [1859] from a church at Atchison, Lincoln spoke of Southern threats to secede, declaring “that any attempt at secession would be treason.”12 Furthermore, he added: “If they [the Southerners] attempt to put their threats into execution we will hang them as they have hanged old John today.”

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Malcolm X Speaks, (1965). George Breitman, (ed.) p. 241, As Quoted in Blacks on John Brown (1972) Benjamin Quarles (Ed) Chicago: Univ. of Illinois press, p. 107. 11

Ransom, Reverdy C. (1906). The Voice of the Negro (Atlanta), October 1906, p. 417. As quoted in Quarles, (op. cit.), p. 83. 12 Burlingame, Michael. (2008). Abraham Lincoln: A Life. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University press. vol. 1, p. 576. 13 Burlingame, (idem.) As quoted from: Reminiscences Senator John Ingalls, Washington Post, 29 June 1890, and from, John James Ingalls, “A Forgotten Chapter of History: Abraham Lincoln in Kansas in 1859,” New York Sun, 31 May 1891.

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Lincoln went on to calibrate the questionable value of John Brown’s sacrifice. The next day, Dec. 3, 1859, in Leavenworth [Kansas], Lincoln again addressed the case of John Brown. Old John Brown has just been executed for treason against a state. We cannot object, even though he agreed with us in thinking slavery wrong. That cannot excuse violence, bloodshed, and treason. It could avail him nothing that he might think himself right. So if constitutionally we elect a [Republican] President, and therefore you undertake to destroy the Union, it will be our duty to deal with you as old John Brown has been dealt with. We shall try to do our duty. We hope and believe that in no section will a majority so act as to render such extreme measures necessary.14

We are accustomed to the overnight successes, unexpected comebacks, and sudden reversals of celebrity culture, we might still find cause to wonder at the course of John Brown’s fame. At the time of his capture in October 1859, Brown was a pariah, a fanatic, a blunderer of enormous proportions. By the summer of 1861 he was a mascot of sorts for the Union army—his death commemorated time and again as soldiers prepared to fight, his name synonymous with bravery, self-sacrifice, and patriotism. No one was more aggrieved by this transformation than John Wilkes Booth. Writing to his brother-in-law in 1864 he lamented that “what was a crime in poor John Brown is now considered (by themselves) as 14

Burlingame, (idem.) As quoted from CWL, 3:502; i.e., Roy P. Basler et al., eds., Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln ( 8 vols. Plus index; New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University press, 1953-1955)

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the greatest and only virtue”15 What characterizes the Black Power Movement of the 1960s, or the Civil rights Movements of the Raid and the African Americans of the 1960s? Does one influence the other sociological and politic happening? How and Why and Should it have done so? We must ask: What was the nature of John Brown’s “final colossal blunder?”16 Or perhaps John Brown’s reading habits can tell us something about the Raid that went awry. Brown went to Harpers Ferry for the sole purpose of waging a successful war. God, who had lead [sic] him through the blood and fire of Kansas, told him to ‘carry the war into Africa.’17 Some General Comments The founding of the Black Liberation Movement of the 1960s has its anchor in John Brown. The “Black Rebellion” is it a historical evolution toward Freedom, or a compromising step in the general direction of formal prejudice and racism.

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Furthermore, it is no accident that the Black Rebellion of the [19]

sixties opened the whole question of freedom in America.19

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Nudelman, Franny. “The Blood of Millions”: John Brown’s Body, Public Violence, and Political Community. American Literary History, Volume 13, Number 4, Winter 2001, pp. 639-670 (Article) © 2001 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS. p. 639. 16 Milhouse, Phil. (1959). A Footnote to John Brown’s Raid. The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, v. 67, no. 4 (Oct. 1959), 396-398. p. 396. 17 Milhouse, Phil. (op. cit.) p. 397. 18 Bennett, Lerone Jr. (1972). The Challenge of Blackness. Chicago: Johnson Publishing Co. p. 149-150 (passim). 19 Bennett, Lerone Jr. (op.cit. p.148.

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