Remembering Slavery, Past and Present--
John Brown Day '12 at Lake Placid

LAKE PLACID, NY- Frederick Douglass' great-great-great grandson Kenneth Morris Jr. will give the keynote address at the annual John Brown Day celebration to be held from 2 to 4 p.m. Saturday, May 5 at the John Brown Farm State Historic Site in Lake Placid. Morris will talk about the friendship and enduring legacy of Douglass and fellow abolitionist John Brown.

Kenneth Morris, Jr.

The two men first met in Massachusetts in 1848, a decade after Douglass successfully escaped from slavery on a Maryland plantation and 11 years before Brown's history-changing raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Va. By the time they met, Douglass had become one of the most eloquent and sought-after champions of freedom and equal suffrage for women and men, regardless of race.
Founder and president of the Frederick Douglass Family Foundation, Morris will also discuss the Foundation's work today to create a modern abolitionist movement in schools all over the country through the vehicle of service-learning.

Joining Morris will be Renan Salgado, a human trafficking specialist based in Rochester, who will shed light in his remarks about slavery and trafficking in New York state today.  John Brown Day 2012 is free and open to the public and it is held outdoors. A brief reception will follow in the lower barn at the site. Donations will be appreciated.

For more information, contact Martha Swan, executive director of John Brown Lives! at 518-962-4758 or mswan@capital.net.

Source: "John Brown Day Slated at Historic Lake Placid Site," Lake Placid News (4 May 2012)