Phila. events commemorate John Brown's legacy

He is remembered by some as a devil, a lunatic, a terrorist. Others say he was a prophet, a martyr, a modern Moses.

John Brown, immortalized in song as the man whose body "lies a-moldering in the grave," died on the gallows on Dec. 2, 1859, and this week's 150th anniversary of his execution will be marked with events throughout the city.

At the first, a lecture yesterday at Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church on South Sixth Street, Philadelphian Charles Blockson, one of the nation's premier African American historians, demonstrated just how misunderstood Brown was.

"When I was growing up, I thought John Brown was a black man," Blockson told the standing-room-only, after-church crowd.

Brown was a white abolitionist who led a raid on a federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Va. (now West Virginia), in October 1859. His intent, historians say, was to seize about 100,000 rifles stored there, but the effort failed. Blacks and whites died, among them two of Brown's sons. He and a handful of others were tried, convicted, and hanged.

At his trial, the 59-year-old Brown was called insane. What else but madness would prompt a white man to risk his life to free black people? He also was condemned as violent, though contemporaries such as Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson disagreed.

Brown, son of a Calvinist minister, had previously helped Harriet Tubman set escaped slaves on a path to Canada via the Underground Railroad (which, Blockson said, he first thought was a "choo-choo that ran underground.")

Brown moved his family to Kansas to rally the antislavery cause there, hoping the territory would enter the Union as a free, rather than slave, state. (The outcome Brown hoped for occurred in 1861, after his death.)

Though Harpers Ferry failed as a raid, it succeeded, historians say, in making it impossible for white and black Americans, enslaved or freed, to continue viewing slavery as an institution that eventually would end of its own volition. Within four years, the Union was divided by the Civil War.

"Brown knew freedom would never be given," the Rev. Mark Kelly Tyler told the congregation at a worship service preceding Blockson's lecture. "He knew it had to be taken."

"John Brown's raid," Tyler said, "was a tipping point."

Roughly 20 local institutions, including the Atwater Kent Museum, the Library Company, and the School District of Philadelphia, are sponsoring this week's commemoration, John Brown: 150 Years Later.

But the man behind the plan is Larry Robin of the independent Center City bookstore that bears his family name. Like Brown, Robin is a white man. He founded the city's long-standing Festival of Black Writing and worked with Blockson for decades coordinating an annual Paul Robeson Festival.

A friend reminded Robin of the Brown anniversary in June, and working though the Moonstone Arts Center, which he founded, Robin could not help but take up the challenge.

"Why me?" he says, reiterating a question. He blushes and then stops short. "Just look at the introduction in the program," referring to the essay "Why John Brown Matters," which he wrote but for which he did not give himself a credit line.

In the piece, Robin writes of a pattern in American history of people willing to fight for freedom and equality for all, regardless of race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation.

"That's what gets me up in the morning," Robin says.

Among the events commemorating Brown's death are a reenactment of a vigil held at Shiloh Baptist Church in Center City on the day Brown was hanged, a discussion of Brown's Philadelphia connections, and a talk by Brown biographer Louis A. DeCaro Jr. explaining why, when Brown's body traveled through Philadelphia en route to burial in Upstate New York, the coffin was empty.

One more point about that "a-moldering in the grave" lyric. The music was from an old folk tune, but black troops in Massachusetts added the words about Brown. After Julia Ward Howe heard the troops singing it as they marched, she wrote lyrics to create "The Battle Hymn of the Republic."

Following is a schedule of "John Brown: 150 Years Later" events. All are free unless noted. Information: www.moonstoneartscenter.org/johnbrown/ or 215-735-9600.

Today: House tour and discussion of slavery in the North, 6:30 p.m. at Cliveden, 6401 Germantown Ave.

Tomorrow: Reenactment of a vigil for Brown held on Martyr's Day, Dec. 2, 1859, 6 p.m. at Shiloh Baptist Church, 2040 Christian St.

Wednesday: Discussion of Horace Pippin's painting John Brown Going to His Hanging, noon at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 118 N. Broad St. "The Legacy of John Brown," a talk with historians Charles Blockson and Molefi Kete Asante, 2 p.m. at Sullivan Hall on Berks Mall at Temple University. "The Empty Coffin: John Brown and Philadelphia," a talk by biographer Louis A. DeCaro Jr., 6 p.m. at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1300 Locust St.

Friday: David S. Reynolds, author of John Brown, Abolitionist, 6 p.m. in the Bossone Building at Drexel University, Market Street between 31st and 32d.

Saturday: David S. Reynolds speaks at 9:30 a.m. at the African American Museum of Philadelphia, 701 Arch St. PBS documentary John Brown's War screened at 3:30 p.m., same location (requires museum admission).

Continuing

Online John Brown exhibit sponsored by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania at www.hsp.org

Walking tour with narration via cell phone. The Civil War Philly phone tour has been augmented with details of Brown's story. Text and map: www.civilwarphilly.net/cell-phone/johnbrown.html. To access the tour, call 215-399-9898. (Tour is prefaced with a three-minute Civil War introduction.)

National Archives at Philadelphia, Ninth and Chestnut Streets. Images compiled by Brown scholar Jean Libby. Through April 30.

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