To my knowledge, there are three statues of John Brown in the United States (not counting smaller statuary, like busts and smaller pieces): First, and perhaps the most well known, is the statue of John Brown and a young black boy, situated at the John Brown Farm (a NY State Historical site) near Lake Placid, NY. It was sculpted by Joseph Pollia and unveiled in 1935. Pollia shows Brown walking with a young black youth, which some--both mildly and critically--have taken as a paternalistic image. However, it should be pointed out that this image could very well be taken to resemble Brown's actual relationship with black neighbors, including Lyman Epps, Jr., whose father was very close to Brown. Lyman Jr. loved John Brown so much that he wrote in later life that he would not leave the cold Essex County, even after all his family had died, because he wanted to tend to Brown's grave at the farm. I prefer to see this statue in this light.
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| Pollia's 1935 Statue, located at the John Brown Farm Historic Site, Lake Placid, N.Y. (photo by Kevin Stewart, flickr) |
The same year, 1935, a life-sized bronze statue of Brown was dedicated in John Brown Memorial Park in Osawatomie, Kan. It obviously reflects the Kansas memory of Brown as a militant free state fighter and hero. The Osawatomie statue was erected by the Woman's Relief Corps of Kansas and sculpted by George Fite Waters in Paris. Both the Lake Placid and Osawatomie statues honored Brown's 135th birthday. At the dedication, according to the Osawatomie Graphic News, the African American Bishop W. T. Vernon said: "Sleeping or walking, John Brown could not, and did not, try to shut out the vision of slavery."
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| Marble Statue of Brown at Osawatomie, sculpted by George Fite Waters (photo from KC Restoration, 2018) |
However, the oldest is perhaps the most interesting, shown below, left, portrays Brown standing as a kind of statesman. This statue was unveiled in 1911, making it the oldest major statue of John Brown in the United States. It stands in the Quindaro section of Kansas City, Kan. It is, for all intents and purposes, an African American production, although it was actually executed in the town of Carrara, Italy, known for both its white marble and its statuary. The sculptor's last name, according to the Topeka Plaindealer (Jun. 16, 1911), is Chignelle, although I have not been able to find him elsewhere online.
The idea of this statue was the brainchild of Bishop Abram Grant, of the African American Episcopal Church, the oldest black denomination. Grant spearheaded this project but unfortunately did not live to see its presentation, having died only five months before its dedication. This was no small production: its cost, $2000 in 1911, which is equivalent to about $55,000 with modern inflation. It was entirely funded by African Americans, which not only shows the degree of admiration and support that black people at that time felt toward Brown, but should also be seen as "pushback" to all the racist statuary that was being erected in that period to commemorate proslavery figures. While it is a salute to John Brown, it is perhaps even more an expression of black resistance.
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| The Quindaro 1911 Statue of Brown, Kansas City, Kan. (photo by Donna, Roadside America.com) |
It is no small thing, however, throughout a time of great crisis brought about by white racist betrayal in the North and brute terrorism and systematic racist assault in the South, many African Americans remembered John Brown as a beacon of hope. It has been observed that when many African Americans fled the South because of white racist terrorism, they went west to Kansas because of its association with John Brown. Today, one would not expect black people to hold the same passion for Brown as their forebears did in the midst of the white supremacist assault upon them. With the passing of time and the continuation of the struggle, the black community has gone on to commemorate and advance monuments both locally and nationally that recall African American leadership.
Sadly, the Quindaro statue has repeatedly been subjected to racist vandalism, first in 2018, according to the Kansas City Star, when it was scrawled with swastikas and other racist graffiti, then in late 2019. According to KSHB in Kansas City (Nov. 20, 2019), the statue once more was intentionally damaged--fingers from the image having been cut off, and a scroll in the figure's hand having been stolen.
Unfortunately, attacks on John Brown sites are not new. In the mid-20th century, Brown aficionado Boyd Stutler observed that the local KKK had left burning crosses in front of the John Brown House in Akron, Ohio, in January and November, 1966 (Stutler to Gee, Nov. 27, 1966, in Hudson Library and Historical Society).
As a kind of coda, it is interesting to learn that at one point, Kansas advocates had attempted to install a statue of Brown in Washington, D.C. In a letter to the Presbyterian clergyman and Brown admirer, John S. Duncan, Stutler wrote that about thirty years before (around 1900), authorization was gained to place a statue of Brown in the Capitol Building's Hall of Fame, known as the National Statuary Hall Collection. In this collection, the states of the union are given space to place statues representing their histories. In the 21st century, a good many older statues have been removed and replaced with other statues (e.g., Nebraska's statue of William Jennings Bryan was removed and replaced by a statue of Chief Standing Bear). According to Stutler, Kansas representatives wanted to place a statue of Brown in the collection, but "for some reason, perhaps largely political, the statue was not made and the places have since been filled by two others of lesser fame" (Stutler to Duncan, Feb. 15, 1928, in Stutler Papers, RP04 0120).
There is yet no national statue honoring the memory of John Brown as being among the great liberating figures of the United States. That day may yet come.
2 comments:
Kansas Supreme Court Chief Justice Albert H. Horton wrote to John Brown Jr. in 1881 that "Steps are also being taken to provide a statue of your Father to be placed in the National Capitol", so it seems that it was a decades-long effort that never came into fruition.
Albert H. Horton to John Brown Jr., Feb. 8, 1881, John Brown Jr. Collection, box 1, folder 6, Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Library and Museums, Fremont, Ohio.
Hi NateR,
Thank you this reference. I can't put my finger on it, but there was some newspaper reference to that ill-fated statue in the Capitol that, as you say, "never came into fruition." That it did not is, perhaps, indicative of the shift that was going on in the nation, from the generation that fought the Civil War and memorialized Brown, and the upcoming generation that was content to sell out black people for votes in the South, and which pulled in white unity for the sake of economic expansion and progress. In such a climate, even some of Brown's surviving contemporaries, who once appreciated him, turned against him and slandered his reputation in the name of law and order, anti-anarchism, and an almost regret that the nation (i.e., whites) had paid so dearly in the war, and might have been avoided. In such a mood, where the nation enjoyed reconciliation and progress at the expense of black people and racial justice, no wonder the JB statue in Washington was aborted.
John Brown aficianado Boyd Stutler wrote in 1928:
"About thirty years ago a statue of Brown was authorized [to be] placed in the Hall of Fame in the capitol at Washington as one of the two allotted the State of Kansas. For some reason, perhaps largely political, the statue was not made and the places have since been filled by two others of lesser fame."
Stutler was understating matters as usual, but his reference to the "largely political" reasons behind the replacement is true enough. Even Kansas leaders betrayed Brown's legacy in the latter 19th century, and some laid the groundwork for the worst anti-Brown propaganda of the 20th century, like the ignoble Eli Thayer, who slandered Brown in the press in the 1880s.
So it goes.--LD
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