John Brown 250 is about American Ideals
As we mark America’s 250th anniversary, JohnBrown250 is setting the historical record straight about John Brown— a patriot whose vision of a multiracial democracy aligned precisely with the nation’s founding promise that all people are created equal.
John Brown was not radical. The radical label originated in the multiracial organization of abolitionists. To deeply racist people, this was “radical.” So that’s where that comes from. Considering the political and moral landscape of the 1850s, Brown was closer to the center than to the poles. On the left were abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison, who rejected the Constitution outright as a "covenant with death, and an agreement with Hell." On the right, were Southern enslavers who had continually threatened secession almost from the nation’s founding.
Neither group honored the founding ideals. But John Brown honored the founding ideals.
Brown rejected human enslavement and the Southern insistence that Black Americans were less capable, less intelligent, and less human. He also rejected the casual racism of Northern antislavery advocates—who detested enslavement but preferred to deport formerly enslaved people rather than have them as neighbors. John Brown had an integrated dinner table decades before Lincoln met Frederick Douglass.
Brown simply demanded that the nation live up to its own stated ideals: all people are created equal. And he walked the talk.
#JohnBrown250 is a hub for Browniacs honoring the Old Man and reinvigorating his critical place in American history. Brown’s life and actions touched more than a third of the nation as it existed in 1859, and more than a quarter as it exists today.
Even in death, his message of Black empowerment resounded, making life uncomfortable for white power brokers on both sides of the Mason Dixon. His legacy was buried to protect the comfort of those who subverted our founding principles in favor of selfish gain.
#JohnBrown250 exists to bring that patriotic history back into the light.
