At a time when white supremacy
poses an existential threat to society, we
need the spirit of Malcolm X, and we need more
white co-conspirators like John Brown.
In his
commencement address at Howard
University, President Joe
Biden called white supremacy a “poison” and
“the most dangerous terrorist threat to our
homeland.” The speech came days after the
birthday of the abolitionist John Brown, who
was born May 9, 1800, and days before the
birthday of the legendary Black leader Malcolm
X, who was born May 19, 1925. Both men knew
that white supremacy was the problem, and they
were killed trying to dismantle
whiteness and save
America, And we are
still dealing with the problem today.
The family of
Malcolm X has sued the FBI, the NYPD and other
government agencies for conspiring
to assassinate the
leader in 1965. Under J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI
formed COINTELPRO to
discredit and disrupt the civil rights
movement, and “Prevent the RISE OF A “MESSIAH”
who could unify, and electrify, the militant
black nationalist movement.”
Malcolm — who
was forming Black coalitions across America
and the world — had planned to take America to
the United
Nations and
charge the country with human rights
violations for its mistreatment of Black
people. He made the “Afro-American problem” an
international problem.
“Sometimes, I
have dared to dream … that one day, history
may even say that my voice — which disturbed
the white man’s smugness, and his arrogance,
and his complacency — that my voice helped to
save America from a grave, possibly even fatal
catastrophe,” Malcolm
X wrote.
And Malcolm had
some things to say about John Brown, the
abolitionist driven by his Christian faith,
personal convictions and love of humanity to
end slavery. Brown was not a white savior; he
was a co-conspirator who helped to liberate
Black people. After coming into the public eye
during the “Bleeding Kansas” civil war — which
determined whether that state would enter the
union as a free or slave state — Brown led a
raid with white and Black folks on
Harpers Ferry, a federal
armory in Virginia (now West Virginia) in the
hopes of sparking a movement to liberate the
enslaved.
John
Brown was hanged in 1859
for murder, insurrection and treason. Although
they killed Brown, slavery remained an
unresolved issue only to be litigated on the
battlefield 16 months later. And as he
predicted in his last words, ending slavery
and purging the land of its crimes would
be bloody.
“You had better
— all you people of the South — prepare
yourselves for a settlement of this question.
It must come up for settlement sooner than you
are prepared for it, and the sooner you
commence that preparation, the better for you.
You may dispose of me very easily — I am
nearly disposed of now, but this question is
still to be settled — this Negro question, I
mean. The end of that is not yet,” Brown
said.
Black folks
loved John Brown. “He done more in dying than
100 men would in living,” said Harriet
Tubman, who thought
Brown was the greatest
white man who ever
lived. And he died only 16 months before the
Civil War. “If John Brown did not end the war
that ended slavery, he did, at least, begin
the war that ended slavery,” said
Frederick
Douglass.
Viewed as a
martyr and hero by many, John Brown was a
lunatic terrorist to others. After all, a
white man acting in the interests of the
enslaved to overthrow the plantation police
state was the greatest fear for white
supremacist Southerners. “They’re trying to
make it look like he was a nut, a fanatic,” Malcolm
X said. “But they
depict him in this image because he was
willing to shed blood to free the slaves. And
any white man who is ready and willing to shed
blood for your freedom — in the sight of other
whites, he’s nuts.”
Malcolm X
suggested that if John Brown were still alive,
he might have been accepted into his OAAU, the
Organization of Afro-American Unity. And
Malcolm viewed Brown as the standard for white
allyship. “If a white man wants to be your
ally, what does he think of John Brown?”
Malcolm asked. “You know what John Brown did?
He went to war. He was a white man who went to
war against white people to help free slaves.
“So if we need white allies in
this country, we don’t need those kind who
compromise. We don’t need those kind who
encourage us to be polite, responsible, you
know,” Malcolm added. “We don’t need those
kind who give us that kind of advice. We don’t
need those kind who tell us how to be patient.
No, if we want some white allies, we need the
kind that John Brown was, or we don’t need
you. And the only way to get those kind is to
turn in a new direction.”
W.E.B.
Du Bois believed
the memory of John Brown was a “mighty warning
to his country,” and that the white
abolitionist felt in his soul the wrong and
danger of American slavery. According to Du
Bois, “John Brown taught us that the cheapest
price to pay for liberty is its cost today.
The building of barriers against the advance
of Negro-Americans hinders but in the end
cannot altogether stop their progress.”
Over a century-and-a-half after
his death, John Brown resonates in a nation
that still has not addressed slavery, racial
injustice and white supremacy.
“I think that
the way most of us, certainly white America
has been educated is to consider issues of
violence against the Black community — whether
it’s enslavement, police violence, street
white supremacist violence, health care — I
think were trained to see these as Black
issues,” Martha Swan, the founder and
executive director of John
Brown Lives!, told theGrio.
The Westport, N.Y., nonprofit organization
uses education, history and the arts to
achieve freedom, human rights and climate
justice.
“One of the really important
lessons of John Brown is he believed it was
born on the backs of Black people, but it was
the duty of white people to resist and work to
abolish,” Swan added.
John Brown
Lives! has continued the century-old tradition
of John
Brown Day, started by
Black Philadelphians Dr. Jesse Max Barber and
Dr. T. Spotuas Burwell, who laid a wreath on
Brown’s grave in the Adirondack Mountains in
upstate New York to honor “this great friend
of the race.”
Swan noted that John Brown was
not only antislavery, but he was also an
egalitarian. “He was a friend to and with
Black people. He believed in human equality
and the dignity of all people, and that made
him exceptional even among abolitionists.”
At a time when white supremacy
is playing for keeps and trying to return the
country to the good ol’ days for white America
— with the repression of Black people and
other people of color, women, LGBTQ+ people
and other marginalized communities — white
America needs more white folks like John
Brown.
“He really forces the question of
what is violence,” Swan noted of Brown,
particularly within the context of the
violence America faces today through the laws
that are enacted and the toxic rhetoric that
is disseminated throughout society. “For most
of his life he was engaged in peaceful
nonviolence,” Swan added. “Whose violence do
we condemn and whose violence do we condone or
celebrate?”
John Brown gave his life for
justice and raised his children to be
antiracists. White people today must learn
some lessons from him if they want America to
survive.