It is a terrible disgrace that some on the left have praised the
Showtime series on John Brown, including Eileen Joneson Jacobin
<https://jacobinmag.com/2020/10/john-brown-good-lord-bird-slavery/>, Ben
Traverson IndieWire
<https://www.indiewire.com/2020/10/the-good-lord-bird-review-showtime-ethan-hawke-john-brown-1234590386/>and
Melanie McFarlandon Salon
<https://www.salon.com/2020/10/04/the-good-lord-bird-review-john-brown-showtime/>.
I say that without having seen a single episode but am sure that if it
is even 1/100^th faithful to James McBride’s novel, it is a hatchet job
on John Brown.
As I work my way through David S. Reynolds’s superlative biography, I
can imagine a great biopic about John Brown that would finally put the
stake in the heart of all the trashy films that preceded it, including
“Santa Fe Trail” and “The Good Lord Bird”. The following excerpt from
Reynolds’s book details the relationship between Brown and the American
Indians in Kansas. Yes, Brown was a Calvinist—with all its faults—but he
was also a deeply ethical human being. A biopic about Brown would
salvage him from all the mud that has been thrown by Hollywood and
premium cable. He might have been a fanatic but that’s what it took to
stand up to racism. Thank goodness the white participation in BLM
protests shows that his soul goes marching on.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
In Kansas there was a close link between the incursions of slavery and
the maltreatment of Native Americans. As late as 1854, Kansas was still
so sparsely settled that no settlement there could be identified as a
white town or village. Native Americans, many of whom had been forced
out of the East, were the main inhabitants of the Territory. Although
white towns formed as proslavery and antislavery forces competed for
supremacy after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Indians were by
far the largest ethnic group during the time John Brown was there.
In warring against proslavery forces, John Brown was defending the
rights of not only African Americans but also of Native Americans.
Indian tribes occupied the finest lands in Kansas. From 1854 onward,
proslavery settlers took control of most of these lands through unfair
bargains, out-right confiscation, or deadly force. A contemporary
journalist noted, “Nearly all of the Indian agents [i.e., white
officials who dealt with the natives] were slavery propagandists, and
many of them owned slaves.” The first to introduce slavery into Kansas
was the Reverend Tom Johnson, an illiterate, coarse, slaveholding
minister who appropriated some of the Shawnee tribe’s finest land and
converted it into Shawnee Mission, a pro-slavery center.
full:
https://louisproyect.org/2020/12/05/john-brown-and-the-american-indian/
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