How John Brown's Legacy Influences Abolitionists Today

Today is the 150th anniversary of the execution of John Brown -- a great defender of human rights, a passionate abolitionist, and yes, a bit of a nut. John Brown's role in history has been reduced to his botched raid on Harpers Ferry and a poorly-executed plan to end slavery in America. But his life was about so much more that that single night and the treason trial and hanging which followed. John Brown stood up to powerful protectors of the institution of slavery. Despite his privileged upbringing, he refused to live in a world where his fellow humans were not free. He was the definition of a progressive and a change-maker.

Brown has always been a controversial figure. Abraham Lincoln called him a "misguided fanatic." Ralph Waldo Emerson compared him to Jesus, claiming "he will make the gallows as glorious as the cross." In a time when black people were legal property -- dehumanized objects belonging to a white man -- Brown lived with them, taught them, and fought for their full integration into society as complete equals with whites. His progressive racial views were radical even in abolitionist circles.

But in order to see his racial utopia come into being, he was prepared to kill a whole lot of people. Based on his actions alone, Brown could just as easily be remembered as the the first man to put a nail in slavery's coffin or, as Ken Chowder described him, "the father of modern terrorism." Love or hate his methods, no one can deny that he lived his beliefs with every ounce of marrow in his bones.

When John Brown was sentenced to be hanged, he was offered a preacher to accompany him to the gallows. He refused, and instead asked to be accompanied by a slave woman and her children, because that would do him the biggest honor. He died a hero to slaves, blacks, and abolitionists. At the time of his death, Brown was so revered in the North that Union soldiers marched into the civil war singing a song called "John Brown's Body", which was later retitled "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." Brown was a hero despite his nuttiness, failures, and trigger-happy finger because he lived and died so that millions of people could be fully human and fully free.

The real tragedy of John Brown is not how the history books remember him or the fact that he was sentenced to death under a law changed a few years later. I don't think he would have even cared that they changed the title of his song to something more impressive sounding. The real tragedy is that the slavery he lived and died to abolish hasn't ended. The great-great-granddaughters of the slaves he worked to free are being sold by pimps in the streets of Toledo and Atlanta and Portland. The distant relations of slaves kidnapped from Africa are currently enslaved there on cocoa farms and in gold mines. And men, women, and children of all nationalities and ethnicities are trafficked every day, all over the world.

The New York Times has a fantastic editorial arguing for Brown to be pardoned for his "treasonous" crime of seizing a federal arsenal and setting free a group of slaves in West Virginia. A posthumous pardon is all fine and well, but there is something even better you can do to honor John Brown's life and memory. You can end slavery. And you don't have to walk to the gallows or attack a federal arsenal to do it. You can make the same decision Brown made and refuse to tolerate slavery in your world. You can stop buying products made by slaves. You can stop tolerating a demand for sex with children. You can start raising money and awareness for anti-trafficking organizations. You could bring back the practice of abolition.

I think John Brown would take that over a posthumous pardon any day.

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