Memorial Field for Black Lives art installation at the John Brown Farm State Historic Site (News photo — Andy Flynn)

LAKE PLACID — “Spiraling Round the Promise of the Right to Vote” is the theme for the sunset ceremony Monday, May 9, at the John Brown Farm State Historic Site. The event — sponsored by the historic site’s friends group, John Brown Lives! — is being held on Brown’s birthday.

Abolitionist John Brown was born May 9, 1800. He was hanged for treason on Dec. 2, 1859, after a failed raid on the U.S. Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), and was buried at his farm in the town of North Elba six days later.

Brown had first moved to North Elba, on a different property, in 1849 to help out a colony of free Blacks, who owned land in a local settlement called Timbuctoo.

May 9 is also the centennial of the first Black pilgrimage to the farm on Brown’s birthday. Civil rights activist J. Max Barber, a dentist and member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People chapter in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, traveled to the farm in 1922 with T. Spotuas Burwell and the Rev. Z. A. Jones to lay a wreath on Brown’s grave. This pilgrimage included even more followers in the future, and by 1924, Barber had created the John Brown Memorial Association, which organized pilgrimages for decades.

“From 75 to 100 people arrived here today for the second annual pilgrimage to the grave of John Brown at North Elba,” reported the May 9, 1924 issue of the Lake Placid News. “The entire delegation is stopping at the National hotel and will remain for a few days.”

Memorial Field for Black Lives art installation at the John Brown Farm State Historic Site (News photo — Andy Flynn)

The guest speaker that year was William Pickens, winner of the Ten Eyck prize in oratory at Yale in 1903, former dean of Morgan College in Baltimore, Maryland, and field secretary of the John Brown Memorial Association at the time.

This year’s sunset ceremony will begin at 7 p.m. and will include laying a wreath on Brown’s grave, as well as local artist Karen Davidson Seward’s newest installation of the Memorial Field for Black Lives, which was installed first in 2020 and again in 2021.

“We kept it up inside the traffic circle all winter long,” said Martha Swan, executive director of John Brown Lives. “And what she has created for this season is a new iteration, or a complement, I should say, to the Memorial Field, which really focuses on the long, long struggle for equal voting rights for Black people in our country.”

In the historic site’s barn is an exhibit titled, “Dreaming of Timbuctoo,” which explains the 19th century equal voting rights history of Blacks in the region. In 1846, when abolitionist Gerrit Smith set in motion his “scheme of justice and benevolence,” New York state law said that Black men must own at least $250 in real property before they could vote. Smith — who owned a lot of land in the Adirondacks — divided 120,000 acres of land into 40-acre plots for free Blacks to move here, cultivate the land and gain the right to vote. Timbuctoo was the settlement for these families in the town of North Elba.

“That really gives people the story as to what brought John Brown to the Adirondacks,” Swan said, adding that Seward’s new installation harkens back to that history.

The Emerge125 dance company — with ties to Harlem and Lake Placid — will give a dance performance in the Memorial Field for Black Lives as part of the ceremony. The event is free and open to the public.

John Brown Day activities from 3 to 5 p.m. on Saturday, May 14 will include a ceremony to honor three people with the 2022 Spirit of John Brown Freedom Award:

¯ Tiffany Rea-Fisher, the executive artistic director of Emerge125.

¯ Karen Davidson Seward, a local artist who created the Memorial Field for Black Lives

¯ Tom Morello, an artist and activist

Established in 2016, the award honors people whose work “invokes the passion and conviction of the 19th-century abolitionist and celebrates leaders and innovators in civil and human rights whose courage, creativity, and commitment are models for others to follow.” It is given annually on John Brown Day.

John Brown Day events at the historic site are free and open to the public.

Learn more online at https://johnbrownlives.org.