The John Brown Project Featured on The Tavis Smiley Show

Dan Morrison of The John Brown Project and Jacque Williams of Culture 4 A Cause join Tavis Smiley to talk about John Brown’s life, legacy, and lessons to be learned from him.

The duo were invited to talk to Tavis during the anniversary week of Brown’s execution. The three Browniacs spoke for the better part of an hour about who John Brown really was, where his abolitionist beliefs came from, and why he turned to violence in the struggle against enslaving humans for profit.

Transcript:

So, if you didn't know that Paul Robeson did a song about John Brown, now you do. I say all the time—I leave the studio smarter every day than when I come in. These guests are always teaching things to me. And so, my role is to share with you a little bit that I know. And I just happened to know that Paul Robeson did a song about John Brown.

So, I thought I'd start this hour sharing that with you. Pleased to welcome two guests now for the hour: the co-founder and executive director of Culture for a Cause, Jacque Williams. Jacque Williams, how are you today, sir?

Jacque: I couldn't be finer if I was in South Carolina.

And pleased to welcome the founder of the John Brown Project, Dan Morrison.

Tavis: Dan, how are you today, sir?

Dan: I'm doing well. Thank you.

Tavis: It's great to have you both on. Glad we have an hour to sort of unpack this. Let me just start with this: Dan, when you hear—I'm sure you were aware of this, of course—but when you hear Paul Robeson singing about John Brown, let me put it this way.

I don't know if Dick Gregory was right or I'm right—that John Brown or Dr. King is the greatest American we've ever produced. I'm going to leave that where it is for the moment. What I do know is, you’ve got to be a bad man for Paul Robeson to sing about you. When you hear that track, Dan, you think what?

What does John Brown’s Body mean to you?

Dan: I think, you know, the first time I heard that song, I thought the John Brown song was a knockoff of the Battle Hymn of the Republic. But then, the more I learned about it, I discovered that the John Brown song was the first song, and that the Battle Hymn actually rewrote the John Brown song to sort of rewrite history a little bit.

So, I get happy when I hear the John Brown song, and I'm a little less happy when I hear Battle Hymn of the Republic.

Tavis: Oh, I hear you. I hear you loud and clear. That’s interesting right there. Jacque Williams, when you hear Paul Robeson singing about John Brown, what comes to mind?

Jacque: Well, with me, Paul Robeson was just such a huge historical figure in the Black community. And he espoused those values, which I think we all are attracted to. And his version of the song just kind of puts things in perspective in terms of the notoriety for John Brown.

And the fact that we need to know more about John Brown and his contributions to our culture. I believe that someone of Paul Robeson’s status recognizing that speaks volumes.

Tavis: It does indeed. All right. So, you're going to learn a whole lot more in this hour about John Brown. The one who Dick Gregory said is the greatest American this country has ever produced. Dick Gregory didn’t necessarily convince me of that. Maybe Jacque and Dan can, by the end of this hour.

This week marks 165 years since the execution of the white abolitionist, John Brown. And we're going to learn more about him for the rest of the hour on Tavis Smiley.

Interrogating and unpacking—that’s what we do around here. You’re listening to Tavis Smiley.

Tavis Smiley and Jacque Williams, and Dan Morrison, as we spend the rest of this hour talking about John Brown. In case you just tuned in, this week marks 165 years since the execution of the white abolitionist John Brown. And I suspect now is as good a time as any to learn more about John Brown.

So, I turn to historian Dan Morrison. Dan, before I get to John Brown's exploits, this audience knows that, for me, I’m always fascinated by the backstory. So, before we get to what we know John Brown did and the execution 165 years ago for what he did, tell me about—and we’ve got time, we’ve got an hour—so tell me more about the backstory. Tell me about John Brown, where he’s born, where he’s raised. Just give me the John Brown story here.

John Brown learned to be an abolitionist from his parents

Dan: Sure. Through the project that Jacque and I worked on, I got to become friends with Dr. Louis DeCaro, who has researched more about John Brown and written more biographies about him than anybody living or dead.

So, we’ve become friends, and I’ve had a lot of conversations and learned a lot about him. You know, John Brown's life basically was one of passion for equality, fairness, and truth. On a most basic level, he stood up to bullies, and he did that from the very beginning. That began in Torrington, Connecticut, the town where he lived with his parents, Owen Brown and Ruth Mills.

You know, John Brown didn't wake up one day and decide to be an abolitionist. He was taught that by his parents. His parents had a deep commitment to equality and abolition, and that was instilled in them, you know, when they were young. When his dad, Owen, was a little boy, his father died in the American Revolution. His father's name was John, incidentally.

He died on Manhattan Island during the Revolution in a war camp. So his mom was a single mom, and they lived on a farm. One of the neighbors lent his mother—I use air quotes when I say lent—one of their enslaved people. It was a man from Ghana; I believe his name was Sam, or his American name was Sam.

Owen fostered a really deep connection with this guy who would carry him around on his shoulders while doing farm work. Even as a little boy, Owen gained this deep understanding and connection to equality. Throughout his life, he grew up as a young adult somewhere in Norfolk, Connecticut.

There was a family—an enslaved family there—who had been brought north by a Southern slaveholder. When the Southern slaveholder wanted to go back south and bring his enslaved people with him, Owen and some other townsfolk stood up and got between the community members and the enslaver. They made it clear that the community was going to remain intact.

His parents had a deep commitment to equality, and they instilled it in their kids. They moved to Ohio after Torrington. Owen was a conductor on the Underground Railroad and was actually one of the founding trustees of Oberlin College. John Brown had a similar experience when he was young. At about 12 years old, he witnessed a white man beating a young Black boy, the same age as Brown, who had become friendly with him. John wrote in his biography that this boy was every bit as much as, or more, his equal. Those were pretty strong words.

Oh, yeah, those times, oh, yeah. That was a defining moment for him. Owen had his own defining moments. As John Brown grew up, he was always an abolitionist. He became a sheep farmer, a tanner, and did a whole bunch of other stuff throughout his life.

When he was born, there were fewer than a million enslaved Americans. By the time they hung him 59 years later, there were over 4 million. Slavery wasn’t dying out slowly like some of the founders had expected and hoped. It was ramping up. In Kansas, before it was a state, when it was a territory, it really took center stage. They had overturned the Missouri Compromise. It was all about voting—whether Kansas was going to be a slave state or a free state.

Slavery was expanding exponentiually

It wasn’t an argument about whether slavery was going to continue or stop—it was how fast it was going to expand. John Brown had tried being nice, asking nicely, voting, and trying all the legal channels, but those didn’t seem to work.

When you look at the brutality of slavery—it was beatings, brutality, murder, and rape every single day—violence was the language that these people spoke, and it was the language they understood. John Brown eventually came to understand that you have to defend yourself and take the fight to them.

First of all, thank you for that. I didn’t want to interrupt. I wanted you to lay that backstory out so we are on the same page here about how John Brown came to be John Brown. And I get it—it started with his parents. Speaking of his parents and where John Brown was raised, his parents were abolitionists, as you mentioned, but were they in an area of other abolitionists? I’m just trying to get a sense of the terrain—the neck of the woods, as it were, where John Brown grew up. You mentioned that his father was a conductor on the Underground Railroad, but give me a bit more about the area and the terrain that he grew up in. Were they in an area of abolitionists? Were they outliers in the area where they were, where John Brown was raised?

I think they were probably a little bit outliers, but not entirely. This was the end of the 18th century, right? There were fewer enslaved Americans in Connecticut than there were in South Carolina.

The church they joined in Torrington was known as a tolerant church. They had the first African American minister there, Le Hayes. Some people that lived nearby, on the road where they bought their house—called John Brown Road now, though I don’t think it was called that back then—were recently freed Black Americans named the Prince family.

New England has a history of helping neighbors, like when it’s time to get the harvest in or whatever. I’m sure they worked with their neighbors to raise the barn or pick the pumpkins, or whatever it was they were doing. I think Owen was seeking that out. It was still early—this was before 1800 even. It wasn’t exploding yet. The Fugitive Slave Law hadn’t been passed. People were still holding out hope that slavery was going to die out and that people would realize it was a terrible practice instead of their so-called peculiar institution.

Um, tell me a bit more. I was, I was struck, and I want to get Jacque in this conversation, but I was struck by your reference to Oberlin. As it turns out, this is just a personal, a personal note, if I might—when I graduated high school, um, there were a number of places that offered me scholarship money, and one of them was Oberlin.

I did not accept—yeah, I did not accept the ride that Oberlin gave me. I went on to Indiana University. I didn't go to Oberlin, but I've been there since then. I've spoken there. It's an amazing school. There are some well-known graduates, as you know, of Oberlin over the years. It's, it's, it's a great school.

I did not realize that John Brown's family had a connection to Oberlin. Tell me a bit more about that, and we'll get Jacque in this conversation.

Yeah. Owen was one of the founding trustees of Oberlin. And it just—you know, a lot of the people... So, Ohio back then, it was called the Western Reserve. It wasn't a state yet, and it was actually like West Connecticut.

So, a lot of people from Connecticut moved out there. It was Connecticut land. And if you had someone in your family who was from the Revolution, you got land there. So, a lot of people moved out there. And, in fact, Hudson, Ohio, looks an awful lot like a New England town because the houses all look like New England houses.

So, he was active in abolition there and really worked toward equality for people. And so, he was one of the trustees at Oberlin, and then also Case Western University, which wasn’t Case Western University then. It was—I can’t remember what it was called. But yeah, he was always pushing the peanut forward and encouraging teaching his children the same way John Brown ended up teaching his children.

Yeah, I love that story. I didn’t realize that connection to Oberlin. All right, Jacque Williams, you’ve been patient. I appreciate that. Tell me more. We’re going to continue this John Brown story, of course. But I’m curious now as to how you and Dan got together doing work around the John Brown project.

How did Jacque and Dan meet?

Well, it was quite interesting because the organization Culture4Cause—our mission is to build community through music and the arts.

Mm.

And, um, I was having a 25-year anniversary of my time here in Torrington and celebrating that with the community and sharing some of the activities and initiatives and programs that Culture4Cause had been instrumental in—pardon the pun. And Dan and I met. He liked the organization’s direction, where they’re coming from, and he felt like he could be a contributor to that, to that means.

So, we were talking about different ideas, things we could do to embolden our mission, and George Floyd happened.

And obviously that, you know, impacted the whole country in a way that, I’m still to this day not quite sure we’re able to grasp or understand. However, we felt that—it wasn’t that we were being opportunists, but, you know, social justice was something that was always very near and dear to our hearts.

So, we felt like we wanted to make a statement about that, and understanding that John Brown was from Torrington and had at least some national recognition, we felt that it would be prudent to start a community arts project based on his narrative. So, we went around and thought about how we could do this and do it in a way that wouldn’t be exploitative but that would actually be complementary to what he stood for. And we started tossing around some ideas, and that’s when we came up with the music documentary. To share with people through music and a chronological timeline as to how the song and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" had changed throughout the decades and throughout the centuries and how that made such a significant influence in our arts and our music and in our culture.

So, we try to build our initiatives around the philosophy of collective community impact. And we kind of went to the community and asked them to get on board with this project, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Yep. Let me—this question might seem a strange question to ask right now.

I’ve got two minutes here now. We’ll continue when we come forward, and we’ll get into the other part of the story that this audience is curious about, I’m sure. And that is what John Brown did and why he is so regarded and why he was executed 165 years ago this week for what he did.

We’ll do that part of the story when we come forward. But to your point now, Jacque, right quick, what do you regard as John Brown’s legacy?

Well, I think that we need to understand, especially in the Black community, that all through our struggles, we’ve had allies from the other side of the aisle.

And I’m sure that’s where Dick Gregory’s sentiments were emanating from—the fact that a lot of the battles that we were able to wage and win, we had some assistance. And when you have someone who’s convicted to the point that John Brown was convicted, in terms of carrying out this message and to leave a legacy that, you know, for whatever reasons, he felt like were worth the sacrifices to make—I think that those sacrifices have to be duly noted. And we felt like it was proper to recognize that and bring it to the forefront.

We talk these days about how certain people get radicalized. That’s the conversation—a term, rather, that we’ve had significant conversation around over the years. Living in the area that we live, how so-and-so, how person X, Y, Z got radicalized to do what they did. I don’t know that the word “radicalize” is a word that can apply to John Brown. What he did was rooted, as you heard Dan opine on earlier and Jacque address just now, it was rooted in a certain set of immutable principles, as I can put it that way. You heard Dan say earlier, John Brown had tried everything else. Nothing else seemed to be working. And so he turned in the way that he did. And we will talk about that turn that John Brown took when we come forward on Tavis Smiley.

Some important Oberlin College graduates

You are indeed with Dan Morrison and Jacque Williams, as we talk about the fact that this week marks 165 years since the execution of the white abolitionist, John Brown. We’re learning more about John Brown in this hour, including that John Brown’s father, Owen, was there to help Oberlin College get off the ground in Ohio. And I was just curious about some of the folk who went to Oberlin, thanks to the work of John Brown’s father and others, of course. But Bobby McFerrin is a graduate of Oberlin, Avery Brooks, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, former mayor of Baltimore, Adrian Fenty, former mayor of D.C., James McBride, brilliant writer, William Grant Steele, Kathleen Cleaver, Ishmael Beah, Yvette Clark—the new head of the CBC, who was on this program just yesterday—was an Oberlin graduate, Anna Julia Cooper, the late great Reverend James Lawson, who passed away here in L.A. earlier this year, went to Oberlin, as did the wife of W.E.B. Du Bois, Shirley Graham Du Bois. Just some of the Black folk who graduated from Oberlin, on whose trustee board John Brown’s father, Owen, sat. I just love interesting factoids, and there you have some interesting factoids about some of these Black graduates, certainly.

Can I, can I add something, please?

Sure, sure.

My mother, back in the day, she had a girls’ assembly. And every weekend, they used to pack their gear up and go have retreats at Oberlin College.

And I was young and didn’t quite understand—why Oberlin College? Why not, you know, the University of Dayton or...

Sure.

...Kent State or Cincinnati? One of those colleges.

Yeah, you know. But as we, you know, have found out, there is a significant cultural distinction for Oberlin College that, just by the names that you just mentioned, pretty much signifies what that meant and what that stood for.

No, I'm glad you said that. Um, I appreciate that. All right, Dan, let's get, I'm watching my clock, my time's getting away from me. So, um, talk to me about John Brown. You made the point earlier, and I'll let you take it any way you want to take it, okay? But John Brown had, had watched, and witnessed, and tried a little bit of everything.

He'd always been an abolitionist, but at some point, something happens, and he makes a turn. Tell me about that, that point, what that was, and how it played itself out.

Why did John Brown turn to violence?

Well, I, you know, I, he, he died a hundred years before I was born, so I never got a chance to meet him or talk to him, but I will, you know, you were saying, you were talking about radical.

Yeah. Right. Um, and the word, you know, he was called a radical abolitionist, and something I learned from another, history professor from University of Connecticut, you know, in those days when there were, there were anti-slavery people and they were abolitionists, and there was a distinction. Abolitionists generally were called radical abolitionists, not because they were violent, but because they believed in equality, because they were egalitarians.

And they had interracial organizations where everyone had a seat at the table. That's what was radical to these people. A lot of the anti-slavery people were still racist. They, you know, there was this thing called the Colonization Society where they just wanted to deport Black people because they wanted the jobs and they just wanted a free white society, no Black people, just free white and no slavery.

They, you know, they correctly understood that slavery was abhorrent, but they incorrectly believed that, you know, white supremacy was a thing. So, you know, that was the landscape that he grew up in, and, you know, I, I touched on a little bit about the brutality of slavery, but it was, I mean, it was messed up, right?

I mean, people were beaten every day, people were killed, people were raped. I mean, there were literally rape farms, you know. I mean, they called them breeding grounds, farms or breeding operations or whatever. But I mean, it's just disgusting. And that's, that's the language that these people were speaking.

The practice was continually expanded and expanded and expanded, you know. They overturned the Missouri Compromise so that they could get more states to be enslavement states as long as they could get them to vote that way. That came out to Kansas and Nebraska, you know. When Kansas was the territory, they—it was the—you know, everyone was deciding, well, how are we going to vote, you know. And there were more free state people there, free soil people there, and so John Brown's kids moved out to Kansas to go vote and help the place become a free state through democracy.

It turns out that the enslavers and the white supremacists from the South and from Missouri had another idea. And they were shipping all kinds of people into the state to create violence. And, you know, some people have heard about the sack on Lawrence, Kansas, where a bunch of white supremacists—they were called border ruffians, they were called red shirts, white league, various, you know, white supremacist militias—would come in and commit violence.

And, you know, steal the ballot boxes and ship a bunch of voters in, steal elections through violence. I mean, it was actual, you know, a pre-Civil War war there in Kansas. There were actual battles. And so his kids had gone out there just to vote Kansas into freedom, and, you know, they didn't bring a bunch of weapons with them. They just brought squirrel guns because they ate squirrels, I guess. And they started writing letters home and said, you know, "Dad, we are being targeted out here," because not only were these white terrorists targeting anti-slavery people, but people like the Browns, who were in favor of Black empowerment, were highly targeted.

It became pretty clear that the Browns were in the sights of these border ruffians, and they were going to get—they were going to kill them. You can read about it in old newspapers, you know. And so John Brown packed up a bunch of Sharps rifles from the Springfield Armory and headed out West.

They fought in the Battle of Blackjack and, you know, won that, and they learned that there was a group that was headed towards the Brown family to kill them. Brown had learned how to be a surveyor when he was younger. And so he got out his surveying gear, and he started surveying right through the border ruffians' camp just to verify it and listen to them talking.

They didn't know who they were talking in front of. He heard firsthand that they were planning to attack the Brown family. He went back, and then the next night, he went, you know, and dragged them out of their cabins and brought them down to Pottawatomie Creek and took their lives.

John Brown’s legacy is one of misunderstanding and disinformation

So the story that, you know, you asked about his legacy, and it's really one of misunderstanding and actually disinformation. You know, I mean, you hear that he killed people in Kansas, but you don't hear that they were terrorists who were, you know, going to kill him the next night.

This was a territory. This was not a state. There was no law enforcement. There was no FBI, you know. The federal government was being run by enslavers. There was no help. There was no one to call. It was either kill or be killed. And so that's what they did.

You used two words a moment ago, Dan, and they don't—they mean different things, obviously, and I want to just press on this just a little bit. When we hear the story of John Brown, at least the story we've been told over and over and over again, which you've now just sort of corrected the record for many of us who haven’t gotten that story right up until now, you used the word "misunderstanding" and "disinformation."

They're obviously not the same thing. I'm going to side with disinformation—that this story has not been told accurately. It ain't a misunderstanding, brother. It's disinformation, is it not?

Yeah, it's been—I mean, his story's been written by Southern racists and Northern racists, right?