At Lake Placid

The Adirondack woods shone with, and the waters of Lake Placid reflected, many a solemn dark face last week on the 127th anniversary of the birth of John Brown whose soul goes marching on.

John Brown (who was either a horse thief or a martyr according to one's views on slavery) was not born at Lake Placid and he lived there, or in nearby North Elba, only six years. The region is now better known for its skiing, skating, golf, tennis and dancing facilities, and as a stronghold of Simplified Spelling, than for John Brown's grave on ever-green Mount Elba.

Negroes, however, do not forget. John Brown struck to free them before even Lincoln's name was great in the land. Nor does Lawyer Clarence Darrow forget. He approves of his father and John Brown having been friends in early Ohio. He helped lead last week's pilgrimage and made the woods ring with emotional oratory:

"The dumb and stupid world plants its weary feet upon the slippery and blood-soaked sand where men like John Brown died. . . . America ought to be glad to build a monument to John Brown and ashamed to let the Negroes take the lead. He was one of America's great men."

Wendell Phillips' phrase, about John Brown having "letters of marque from God," accurately describes the religious zealot who conducted midnight reprisals of lives and livestock against the proponents of slavery in "Bloody Kansas" and who, in 1858, withdrew to Canada to formulate a design as unusual as it was drastic.

Gathering a party of 11 whites and 35 Negroes, John Brown drafted a "Provisional Constitution and Ordinance for the People of the United States," naming himself Commander-in-Chief and various followers as Secretary of State, of War, of the Treasury, etc.

On Oct. 16, 1859, he suddenly attacked the strategic U. S. arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Va., took it and prepared to issue munitions, including 1,000 pikes he had foresightedly brought along, to the throngs of uprisen slaves he had pictured joining him.

But virtually no slaves rose up. Instead Col. Robert E. Lee, then of the U. S. Army, marched up and recaptured the arsenal. Invested to the last with the dignity of intense conviction, John Brown was hanged in a hollow square of 1,500 infantry. His gallows-words were: "I am worth inconceivably more to hang than for any other purpose."

Lawyer Clarence Darrow, whose Lake Placid address partook of the fervor of a national legend, often addresses Negroes, with a fervor entirely his own. Many a member of the John Brown pilgrimage went to hear Mr. Darrow, in Philadelphia, make his usual speech about the "race" people. In this speech Mr. Darrow says:

"Of course I know that all of you are not the descendants of colored people, or why do you have so many colors? It must be that so many white women have raped colored men. . ..

"The white man today is not white. He is ashen grey. . . .

"The blackest woman can ride in a Pullman provided she carries a white baby in her lap. . . .

"Now, I come to the conclusion that whatever you get, you have to get it yourself. You can't get it from the whites and you can't get it out of the skies. . . .

"You never had but one weapon with which to fight--the ballot-- and you have thrown that away. Everywhere in the United States of America you have been sold out by a bunch of colored politicians. . . .

"They say the Negro is lazy and yet when a white man does happen to work he says, 'I worked like a nigger. . . .

"When I meet a colored man I feel as if I ought to apologize for my race and so I do. . . ."