“If we had learned anything over the last decade, it was that there was no other way to defeat slavery, except with a willingness to die for it. We had learned what the Negroes long knew. And thus we merely did what the Negroes themselves had done over and over in the past—in Haiti, in the mountains of Jamaica, and in the swamps of Virginia—but could not do out there on the plains of Kansas. We did what we wanted the Negroes to do in Kansas. By slaying those five pro-slavers on the Pottawatomie that night, we placed hundreds, thousands, of other white men in the same position that we along amongst the whites had held for years: for now every white man in Kansas, anti-slaver and pro-slaver alike, had to be ready to die for his cause.” SlaveryRebellionMassacreJohn BrownAntislaveryBloody Kansas Book:Cloudsplitter Source: Cloudsplitter
“John Brown first swam into my vision in the 1960s when I was a political activist in the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement at Chapel Hill, where I went to university.” FirstsWarPoliticalVisionRightsMovementUniversityCivil RightsHillsBrownActivistAnti War1960sCivil Rights MovementChapelCivil Right MovementAnti War MovementJohn BrownChapel Hill Author:Russell Banks
“The 60s passed and faded and I grew older, and in 1987 bought a house in upstate New York, and it turned out that John Brown was buried down the road from my house and that he had lived there longer than anywhere else and his house was still standing.” StillsHouseNew YorkGrewStandingBrownBuriedFadedDown The RoadJohn BrownUpstate New York Author:Russell Banks
