Kansas City organizers were motivated by the recent defacing of the John Brown memorial erected in Kansas City, KS near the Quindaro ruins, to hold a commemoration ceremony in recognition of the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s death at the foot of the Brown Memorial.
On Sunday afternoon, March 18, the Brown statute was discovered to have been defaced with a swastika, “hail Satan,” and racial slurs.
The defacing “reaffirmed the task and journey to improve relationships with our surrounding areas require more awareness and educational outreach,” said Marvin Robinson, II, with the Quindaro Ruins and Underground Railroad – Exercise 2018. “We want to pause long enough in honor of and to pay homage to true freedom fighters of different historical timelines, who gave all that they had to help our beloved nation secure a stronger more inclusive United States of America.”
The rally will be held on Wed., April 4 at 4 p.m. at the foot of the Brown Statue, 27th and Sewell, Kansas City, KS.
The community of Quindaro was a free-state port for abolitionists and a safe haven for those escaping slavery. It was also home to Western University, the first African-American university west of the Mississippi River, until the school closed in the 1940s.
John Brown, and abolitionist, made a name for himself in the Kansas Territory before leading a failed slave revolt at Harpers Ferry. The Brown statute, made of imported Italian marble, was erected in 1911.
