A great many of my blog posts are born from the unexpected intersections and connections between things that I research, teach, hear, and read.<\/p>\n
This one is sparked by beginning to watch the TV series The Good Lord Bird. The title does not immediately make its reference clear, much less what the focus of the story will be. The series about the abolitionist John Brown. The first episode is prefaced by the disclaimer that \u201cAll of this is true. Most of it happened.\u201d The first episode of this series on ShowTime is on YouTube and so you can watch it even without a subscription:<\/p>\n
https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=1Q-4N7QaxT8&app=desktop<\/p>\n
It doesn\u2019t matter whether you share my interests to have come across the abolitionist John Brown before. Indeed, people with greater interest in United States history, and specifically the Civil War, than my own will probably be surprised and disappointed not only by my previously extremely vague and imprecise awareness of him. But if you share my taste in music you will have seen a depiction of him.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s John Brown in the painting that serves as the cover art to the first album by the progressive rock band Kansas. The band\u2019s drummer\u00a0Phil Ehart tells the story of how he saw the mural at the Kansas statehouse as a teenager and decided that if he ever made an album that was what he wanted on the cover. When the time came, he got his wish.<\/a>\u00a0The mural is called \u201cTragic Prelude\u201d and the story behind it is interesting. It depicts Brown holding an actual Bible (with an alpha and omega hinting at Apocalypse) as well as a rifle known as a \u201cBeecher\u2019s Bible\u201d apparently because of its use in the struggle of Christian abolitionists<\/p>\n There are intersections with Butler University, too. Ovid Butler who founded the institution and after whom it is now named, was an abolitionist. My colleague Jason Lantzer wrote a book,\u00a0Rebel Bulldog<\/em><\/a>, about two brothers who studied at Butler University and who ended up fighting on opposite sides in the Civil War. One of them was at Virginia Military Institute when John Brown\u2019s raid at Harpers Ferry took place<\/a> and it convinced him he was a northerner at heart.\u00a0An individual named after the university\u2019s founder, Ovid Butler Knapp, recalled hearing his father tell of John Brown\u2019s activities fighting slavery<\/a>.<\/p>\n Brown was willing to engage in violence in his effort to end slavery in a way and to an extent that most others were not. He was also convinced that this mission of his was required by his Christian faith. His story undoubtedly makes us uncomfortable today, yet it is extremely important to know and reflect on. It is an important reminder that Christianity, violence, and concern for social justice are not, as one might think, a case in which one can only pick two of the three. John Brown proves otherwise. Whether the mixture is coherent is of course a different question.<\/p>\n For more on the series see the articles in\u00a0Slate<\/em><\/a> and\u00a0Smithsonian Magazine<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n The painting in the statehouse that became the album cover of Kansas\u2019 first album also features in this video about the Harpers Ferry raid:<\/p>\n