New from me -- A little history, on John Brown's birthday, of W.E.B. Du Bois's difficulty trying to install a plaque in his honor at Harper's Ferry. nycsouthpaw.com/p/his-truth-go…

This is mostly my humble effort to try to plant more firmly in the public record the speech Du Bois gave defending his view of Brown’s martyrdom back in 1932–which I think is a treasure of language. These are the first four pages:

and here are the last two pages:

In 1932, after the trustees of Storer College rejected its language as too comtroversial, Du Bois’s plaque was taken back to NAACP headquarters in DC. Seventy-four years later, in 2006, a replica was finally installed in the national park at Harper’s Ferry.

controversial*

This is my favorite passage from Du Bois’s speech.