What brings a former Black Panther, a former SDSer,reenactors, students, teachers, matriarchs and members of the citizen's militia together to honor and commemorate the 150th Anniversary of John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry? Especially when much of the two day talking head program barely discussed the Harper's Ferry raid. Only the Lord knows, but what I can testify to brother and sister is that to have listened to the provocative and detailed presentations does posit the familiar question of whether this American 1776 democratic experiment is a dream or a nightmare. Of course history, herstory and ourstory should not be painted as polar opposite scenarios. The collage of blood,guts, hopes, dreams, storms and moral pontifications needs a broad and expanding canvass. Like the expansion of the Pilgrim invasion from Plymouth Rock to the Monterrey Peninsula, to the Big Island and to Juneau Alaska, his truth our truth keeps marching on.
Participating in the 150th commemoration as an attendee, seized my sense of time and convulsed the past, present and future into a cauldron of whirling emotions and theories. Were Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and SDS for example natural extensions of the John Brown activist legacy? Was John Brown a madman or a saint? Is violence as American as apple pie, as embodied by the Sons of Liberty and the KKK and reiterated by H. Rap Brown? Go to the Gilder Lehman web site link and read the bios, panel topics and schedule.(abbreviated below) Consider the fact that one of the most influential institutions on the planet considered it important to remember what happened 150 years ago in these "united" states. http://bit.ly/4xcGj7
John Brown, Slavery, and the Legacies of Revolutionary Violence in Our Own Time:
A Conference Commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the Harpers Ferry Raid
Gilder Lehrman Center's 11th Annual International Conference
October 29-31, 2009
Yale University
New Haven, Connecticut
Thursday, October 29, William L. Harkness Hall, Room 201 (Sudler Hall), 100 Wall Street
Friday and Saturday, October 30-31, Luce Hall Auditorium, 34 Hillhouse Avenue
Discussions of the place of violence -- its forms, its causes, its justice or injustice -- in American history often begin with John Brown and his exploits in Kansas and at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in the 1850s. Brown's image has been appropriated by groups from the left and the right. He is a historical as well as a legendary figure, and often the myth overshadows the reality. This conference will explore the meaning and memory of John Brown as well as the problem of violence in American culture, past and present.
The conference will open on the evening of Thursday, October 29 with a performance of John Brown: Trumpet of Freedom by actor and playwright Norman Marshall. On Friday, October 30 and Saturday, October 31, conference panels will focus on four major themes:
* John Brown: A Problem in Biography
* John Brown and the Arts
* John Brown and the Legacies of Violence
* John Brown and Abolitionism
* Concluding Roundtable: A Problem for Our Own Time
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