John Brown Day 2023 on Saturday, May 13 will be dedicated to the award-winning novelist Russell Banks who died in January of this year. It was Bank’s 1998 novel, Cloudsplitter, that revived popular interest in John Brown. It was Banks, with the late Noel Ignatiev and others, who sounded the call in 1999 to “those who share the vision of a country without racial walls” to gather at the John Brown Farm to renew the abolitionist’s legacy.
The tradition of pilgrimage to lay a wreath on Brown’s grave was started in 1922 by Black Philadelphians Dr. Jesse Max Barber and Dr. T. Spotuas Burwell to honor, as Barber put it, “this great friend of the race.” Every May, well into the 1980s, groups organized by the John Brown Memorials Association (JBMA) traveled from Philadelphia, New York City, Chicago, and elsewhere to the Brown family homestead to keep Brown’s memory alive.
“It’s not an exaggeration to say that Russell revived John Brown Day on May 9, 1999, after a decade or more had lapsed since the last organized pilgrimage,” said Swan. “When we gather this year, he will be in our collective hearts, with love and gratitude and a sense of profound loss, too.”
Russell Banks reading from John Brown’s final speech before the Court, on John Brown Day 2014. Adirondack Daily Enterprise/Photo
Reception tickets: $40 per person.
For more information or to reserve reception tickets, email info@johnbrownlives.org or call 518-744-7112.