John Brown was the abolitionist to end all abolitionists. People thought he was crazy. He was like John Coltrane playing free jazz, exhausting all possibilities in his approach to harmony and improvisation.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Strangely enough, the legend of John Brown, who was clearly crazy, helped the abolitionist cause and is thought to have precipitated the American Civil War.
The abolitionists were not like the rugged people out West, and they were not like John Brown, either. They were people who made speeches and did politics.
John Brown was tried for treason, murder, and inciting slaves to insurrection.
John Brown was clearly flawed in real life. He did some terrible things, but he did some things none of us would have had the heart to do. His moral leanings were unquestionably admirable.
People call him a terrorist, but you can use language to do many things and say many things about people, but John Brown was a hero.
James Brown was the Monday-to-Friday guy. He was the hardest man in show business. He was like your dad and your uncle: He showed up, and he hit hard.
You go through the Civil Rights struggle, everybody knew the songs - 'We shall overcome.' Everybody would sing it. Music helped us. James Brown, 'Say It Loud - I'm Black and I'm Proud.' They helped black people figure out how to navigate what was a very treacherous place in America for them.
James Brown was one of the first artists who found four bars that he liked and played them the entire way through, and then he just added to it vocally.
We don't know who John Brown was, and in many ways, his work shaped where we are today. He was a Pennsylvanian. He was the prototypical Yankee who fought back and suffered in doing so.
John Brown's effort was peculiar. It was not a slave insurrection.