One hundred and fifty years ago today, John Brown led his raid on the federal armory in Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia. He hoped to strike a blow against slavery. Instead, he created a hostage situation and was hanged for it.
Scholars, including David Blight and Herbert Aptheker, are discussing the many faces of John Brown (abolitionist, religious fanatic, terrorist, civil rights activist) and his many legacies at a conference in Harper’s Ferry.
John Brown’s methods make many people uncomfortable, but he answered the question which many civil rights activists are faced, according to Eric Foner: “”What is one’s moral obligation when faced with an unjust system?”
We blogged recently about civil rights cold cases. A leader in these investigations of racially-motivated murders in the 1960s has died, succumbing to pancreatic cancer. In related news, a federal appeals court has asked the Supreme Court to review a case involving the kidnap and murder of two young black men in Mississippi in 1964.
And in information technology news, a proposed settlement allowing Google to digitize millions of books is being hailed as a move that could, by improving access to knowledge, “level the playing field at the most fundamental intersection of rights, knowledge and advocacy.”
Rhonda Y. Williams of Case Western Reserve University gives a talk entitled “Obscured Lives, Hidden Histories (Take 2): Or, Narratives Which Otherwise Have Yet to Be Told.”
This talk was part of “The Long Civil Rights Movement: Histories, Politics, Memories,” a conference hosted by the Southern Oral History Program as part of the Long Civil Rights Movement Publishing Project.
