John Brown Archives

Echoes of Enslavement

Teaching Activity. By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca.
Students discover “echoes of enslavement” in their own state — discrete sites of remembering, forgetting, honoring, lying, or distorting — in this lesson based on the book How the Word Is Passed by Clint Smith.

Who Fought to End Slavery? Meet the Abolitionists

Teaching Activity. By Adam Sanchez, Brady Bennon, Deb Delman, and Jessica Lovaas.
This mixer role play introduces students to the stories of famous and lesser-known abolitionists, through biography and investigation.

Members of the 55th Massachusetts | Zinn Education Project

Feb. 18, 1865: Black Soldiers March into Charleston

The Union Army moved into Charleston, South Carolina, the city where the Civil War had begun four years earlier.

The First Decoration Day

Article. By David W. Blight. 2011.
The people's history of Memorial Day in Charleston, South Carolina during Reconstruction.

collage of six Black abolitionists in the United States.

‘If There Is No Struggle…’: Teaching a People’s History of the Abolition Movement

Teaching Activity. By Bill Bigelow. Rethinking Schools. 16 pages.
In this lesson, students explore many of the real challenges faced by abolitionists with a focus on the American Anti-Slavery Society.

Teaching Activity by Bill Bigelow

Slavery and Defiance

Teaching Guide. By Gayle Olson-Raymer. 17 pages.
Questions and teaching ideas for Chapter 9 of Voices of a People's History of the United States on black and white resistance to slavery before the Civil War.

John Brown’s Last Speech

Film clip. Voices of a People's History.
Dramatic reading by David Strathairn of John Brown’s last speech delivered on November 2, 1859.

Dec. 3, 1860: Frederick Douglass Gives Speech on John Brown

In his 1860 speech commemorating radical abolitionist John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, Frederick Douglass argued that slavery would only end if the slave owner feared the violent retribution of the enslaved.

Dec. 2, 1859: John Brown Executed

Abolitionist John Brown was executed by the state of Virginia for leading the infamous Harpers Ferry Raid.

“Mrs. Francis E. W. Harper,” portrait with Frances Harper’s name misspelled, taken from page 748 in The Underground Railroad: A Record of Facts, Authentic Narratives, Letters… printed by Porter & Coates (Philadelphia, 1872).

Nov. 25, 1859: Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Writes to John Brown in Prison

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, a Black abolitionist and writer, wrote to John Brown as he awaited his execution.

Oct. 16, 1859: Abolitionist Raid on Harpers Ferry

An abolitionist raid against a federal armory in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia in an attempt to start an armed revolt against the institution of slavery.

May 8, 1858: John Brown and Constitutional Convention

John Brown, Martin Delany, and others gathered for a Constitutional Convention in Chatham, Canada.

March 24, 1853: Mary Ann Shadd Cary Published “The Provincial Freeman”

Mary Ann Shadd Cary published the first edition of “The Provincial Freeman,” Canada’s first anti-slavery newspaper.

Two-story farmhouse where the Christian Riot occurred in 1851 in Pennsylvania.

Sept. 11, 1851: Christiana Resistance

A community of armed Black men and women in Christiana, Pennsylvania successfully defended four Black people from capture, serving as a catalyst for further armed self-defense within the abolitionist movement.