John Brown Lives! Celebrating 25 Years This Weekend

John Brown Lives! (JBL!) dates its founding twenty-five years ago to October 16, 1999, when Oswald Sykes, a former hospital administrator from the Capital Region, gave a presentation at the John Brown Farm State Historic Site on the English slave ship, the Henrietta Marie, grounding the organization’s mission in reckoning with the nation’s foundational history of slavery.

The two-day launch of JBL!’s 25th-anniversary will begin with a fall harvest reception at the John Brown Farm on Saturday, October 12, from 3 until 5 pm, and continue Sunday, October 12, from 1 until 3 pm, at Adirondack Community Church with a book talk and signing of Tiya Miles’ new release, Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People (Penguin Press, 2024).

Memorial on the Ocean Floor

The Henrietta Marie sank in the waters near Florida after leaving nearly 200 people to be enslaved in Jamaica. The vessel lay undetected on the ocean floor for 300 years. Avid scuba divers, Sykes and his wife Marion were instrumental in the efforts of the National Association of Black Scuba Divers to memorialize the many millions of African women, men and children who perished on the transatlantic crossing and those who survived and were sold into bondage in the so-called New World.

Sykes designed an underwater memorial to honor them and was one of a group of black scuba divers who placed it at the site of the shipwreck in 1993. He designed the monument and wrote the inscription, which read: “Speak her name and gently touch the souls of our ancestors.”

The gathering on October 12 is also an opportunity to welcome historian Tiya Miles and sculptor Wesley Wofford, both who will be visiting the John Brown Farm for the first time, and to spiral through a voting rights history of the United States with artist Ren Davidson Seward and stroll the “Before She Was Harriet” StoryWalk about Harriet Tubman installed at the site, thanks to the Lake Placid Public Library. Children’s librarian Karen Armstrong is coordinating art activities for children and families and refreshments will be served in the upper barn.

Harriet Tubman in History and Art

Wofford’s “Beacon of Hope” statue of Harriet Tubman has been a powerful and emotive presence at the John Brown Farm since July and the focal point of many JBL! programs this season. It will be de-installed on October 16 and moved to Niagara Falls.

Miles is an American historian and the author of eight books, including four prize-winning histories about race and slavery in the American past.  Miles publishes essays and reviews in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, The New York Review of Books, and other media outlets, and she has consulted with colleagues at historic sites and museums on representations of slavery, African American material culture, and the Black-Indigenous intertwined past.

Her work has been supported by a MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Award, the Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Guggenheim Foundation. She is currently the Michael Garvey Professor of History and Radcliffe Alumnae Professor at Harvard University.

Doors to her book talk and signing at Adirondack Community Church across from the Lake Placid Post Office, at 12:45 pm. In appreciation of teachers, John Brown Lives! will give a free, signed copy of Night Flyer to the first three educators who walk in the door.

The weekend events are free, open to all and made possible with support from North Elba LEAF, Stewart’s/Dake Family Foundation, Humanities New York, SUNY-ESF’s Timbuctoo Institute, Crowne Plaza Lake Placid, Lake Champlain Basin Program, an angel donor, and the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation.

For more information visit www.johnbrownlives.org or email info@johnbrownlives.org.

John Brown Lives! (JBL!) is a non-profit freedom education and human rights project that brings communities together using history, education, advocacy, and the arts to address critical issues of our time. The official NYS Friends Group of the John Brown Farm State Historic Site, JBL! strives for the Farm to be recognized, supported, and visited as a site of conscience and a place for teaching, reflection, discovery, and dialogue for Adirondack residents and visitors of all ages.