John Brown Lives! honors artists, activists with annual award

WESTPORT | John Brown Lives! will celebrate John Brown Day and this year's distinguished Spirit of John Brown Freedom awardees Saturday, May 14, from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m., at the John Brown Farm State Historic Site in Lake Placid. The award is given annually by the freedom education and human rights project John Brown Lives! to recognize individuals and organizations whose work invokes the passion and conviction of the 19th-century abolitionist who dedicated his life to the cause of liberation and full human equality. The 2022 awardees are Karen (Ren) Davidson Seward, creator of the Memorial Field for Black Lives, Tiffany Rea-Fisher, choreographer and artistic director of EMERGE125 dance company, and artist and activist Tom Morello. As part of the celebration, Theresa "Bear" Fox will perform traditional Mohawk songs, and MaryNell Morgan and Paul Murray will sing a freedom song adapted by Freedom Riders from Harry Belafonte's "Calypso Freedom." In prior years, JBL! presented the award to actor-activist Danny Glover; Jen Krester, for her dedication to young climate justice activists; award-winning poet Martín Espada; artist and historian Nell Painter; and Ellen Rocco, former station manager at North Country Public Radio, to name a few. John Brown Day continues a tradition started 100 years ago, May 9, 1922, when the Philadelphia chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) commissioned Dr. J. Max Barber and Dr. T. Spotuas Burwell to travel to the John Brown Farm to lay a wreath on the abolitionist's grave. At the gravesite that spring day, Dr. Barber denounced the anti-Black violence of the mob, the Ku Klux Klan, and the state. In a reflection piece that he wrote a few months later for the NAACP's Crisis magazine, he described Brown as a "great friend of the race" who "saw at the beginning and saw at the end that slavery was wrong, an unclean thing in the world…To this old Puritan, the time for cajoling and temporizing with the unclean thing had passed. The fester had to be lanced." JBL! Executive Director Martha Swan expressed that John Brown's work is still meaningful today because systemic anti-Black racism and violence continue, unabated, in our country. She said that "it's especially important for White America to understand that Brown was not only anti-slavery. He was an anti-racist ally, friend, and neighbor to Black people and he believed that it was his duty, as a White person, to take up the struggle of Black America—to end slavery and secure the same liberties, rights, and blessings of citizenship—as his own." Echoing Brown's legacy of action, the 2022 Spirit of John Brown Freedom awardees each embody Brown's exhortation to act for justice and in solidarity with the poor and the oppressed. For more information visit johnbrownlives.org or email info@johnbrownlives.org.

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John Brown Lives! honors artists, activists with annual award

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