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John Brown Lives! has announced “John Brown Day: A Day of Reflection. A Day of Action.” is set for May 4th, 2019 from 2 to 4 pm, at the John Brown Farm State Historic Site.
John Brown Day is a commemoration honoring women and men whose work invokes the passion and conviction of the 19th-century abolitionist who dedicated his life to the cause of liberation.
This year’s awardees are:
Dr. Barbara Ransby, professor of African American Studies, Gender and Women’s Studies, and History at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) where she directs the campus-wide Social Justice Initiative. Barbara is a historian, professor, activist, and author of Making All Black Lives Matter.
Lewis Papenfuse, former Executive Director of the Worker Justice Center of New York based in Rochester. Throughout his career, Lewis has fought for justice and human rights for agricultural and other low wage workers in New York State.
Janet McFetridge, retired French teacher and member of Plattsburgh Cares. Janet has been bearing compassionate witness to immigrants and refugees fleeing the US for fear of deportation at an unofficial border crossing into Canada.
Musical Guest will be Taina Asili, a singer, filmmaker and activist from Albany. You can watch a 10 minute music video documentary about the food justice work of Leah Penniman of Soul Fire Farm that inspired JBL! to invite Taina to John Brown Day here.
John Brown Day is free and open to the public. A reception follows at 5 pm at the Olympic Ski Jumping Complex Base Lodge. Reception tickets are $30 per person. To reserve your tickets for the reception, click here.
John Brown Farm State Historic Site is located on John Brown Road near Lake Placid, in the town of North Elba.
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Looking forward to seeing all at JBFarm May 4. Most know JBFarm is Lot 95 of Thorn’s survey; and some know that JB was sent here to (then) west Keene, soon to be North Elba, in 1849 to settle affairs re Lot 93, which Gerrit Smith had given to 2 or 3 families (I think from Troy NY); JB then rented the Flanders’ Farm, about 1 1/2 miles east from JBFarm (see Richard Henry Dana’s “How I Met John Brown”–(in 1849), The Atlantic Monthly, 1871). In 1857 JB was given Lot 88 (Cornell’s potato field) via an arrangement by Amos Lawrence et alia to buy “The Thompson Brothers’ Contract” for $1000; it was there, in Henry Thompson’s house that JB announced departing for Harper’s Ferry in June 1859. Currently, Cornell is giving up its potato operations; and so the future of this once Thompson/Brown/Hinckley land is ????. Also, at present, I and many neighbors are trying to prevent the desecration of Lot 93 with a LPG tank farm. (Lot 93 runs E-W at the N end of JBRd (the original) and contains both NE Cem and the Jewish Cem. (Watson Brown’s wife, Martha Brewster, and child b. 1860, and the Epps & Appos, are buried close to one another in NE Cem.) The two ponds on Bear Cub Creek (aka Pine Brook) at its intersection with Old Military Rd & also Church St are on Lot 93 as is the land just W from LP airport. Look at page 6 of vol II of Donaldson’s THE HISTORY OF THE ADIRONDACKS, 1921 (trigger warning for blatant racism) for the history of “TIMBUKTU” as it applies to the negro settlers on Lot 93, apparently still there in the 1900-1920 period of Donaldson’s friendship with Thomas Peacock. Peacock’s father bought Mary Browns household possessions in 1863; Mary sold Lot 95 and the half of Lot 88 she owned to Alexis Hinckley, and moved to California, via wagon train with small children, Annie, son Salmon & his wife Abigail Hinckley. My great grandfather Reuben Lawrence moved to Lot 93 in 1868, and thence to JBFarm till his death in 1908 My grandfather, John Brown Lawrence, was born there in 1870, and recalled thru his life visiting with Mary Brown when she came back to JB’s Grave in 1882 to bury Watson’s bones. Letters twixt Mary & my great grandmother are in Villard’s collection at Columbia University.
I’d especially like help/suggestions to “save” Lot 88, and better still all of Cornell’s potato farm, plus the extant Heaven Hill (Hinckley’s, now the Henry Uihlein Estate, with only one beneficiary, viz Cornell), plus perhaps Cornell’s sugar works (originally from 1840 William Appo’s lot (Appo a black born in India, married to a Haitian, Philadephia/NYC musician, needed a summer vacation place; his son Wm Appo died at First Bull Run battle, his 3rd wife, a Thompson, outlived him and sold to Annie Newman in 1905, then moved to CA). And add all these lands to JBFarm, to form a greater say “John Brown’s Living Farm”, as an educational institution with mid 19th century agriculture, and a live-in college experience for all those ‘saved’ via JB’s ‘mission’ and example as THE American Original–most likely a “college” or secondary school under the aegis of Cornell’s NYS-owned/controlled operations.
See you May 4; or call me “Tony” at 518 523-8205
Anthony G. Lawrence
163 John Brown Road
Lake Placid, NY 12946