STL artist tells John Brown’s story for kids
John Hendrix is clearly a St. Louis author and illustrator to watch.
“John Brown: His Fight for Freedom” is not only a gorgeously drawn picture book, it tackles a controversial historical figure unusual to children’s books. Although Hendrix has done artwork for other books, “John Brown” (Abrams Books for Young Readers) is the first book he has both written and illustrated.
“To me Brown is an incredibly important part of understanding why the Civil War happened,” Hendrix said recently in a telephone interview. “The book certainly is not for children younger than fifth grade. But I think Brown is more a Civil Rights-kind of guy than a crazy terrorist.”
This October marks the 150th anniversary of the abolitionist’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, Va., in which several people were killed. Brown was captured, tried for treason and murder and later hanged. His 1859 raid is credited as a major factor in starting the Civil War.
“You can’t deny his role in history is significant,” Hendrix says. “I think it’s one of those things that’s not told and I enjoy the challenge of working with a difficult subject.”
Hendrix gives Brown a mythic, almost tall tale look:
In Kansas, “he’s like Paul Bunyan. I spent seven years there. He’s like a folk hero. Even at the time he was a larger-than-life character.
“Some of the scale shifts (in the book’s art) are just stylistic, how I draw. But in two places in the book his scale is really different, he’s a huge figure looming over the landscape. Some of that is metaphorical. He had huge visions for himself and his ideals.
“Then there are moments where he is very small. It’s like the blowing up and shrinking of his expectations.”
Toward the conclusion of the book, Hendrix writes that Brown was told to plead insanity but refused because he thought it would damage the cause of abolition: “John never lived to see a United States free of slavery. But in death, he accomplished what he could not in life. For the forty-five days between his capture and his death, John wrote many letters that were published in newspapers all around the country. The publicity surrounding his execution strengthened the abolitionist cause and rallied thousands to call for an end to slavery. Many people called him a crazy zealot and thought his scheme was a bloodthirsty act of terrorism. But others said he was a hero.”
Hendrix, 33, lives in University City with his family. He will talk more about “John Brown” at 6 tonight (Thursday, Sept. 10) at Subterranean Books, 6275 Delmar Boulevard.
A tenure-track professor at Washington University, Hendrix has done illustrations for The New Yorker and The New York Times. He did the illustration but not the text for “Abe Lincoln Crosses a Creek.”
For more on Hendrix, go to www.johnhendrix.com
Curious to know how the children’s book author/illustrator handles the Pottawatomie Massacre of 1856, where in the dark of night John Brown and his followers pulled five unarmed Southerners out of there homes and hacked them to death with a long sword?
Certainly the likes of Harriett Tubman would be a better example for children in the abolitionist movement. John Brown is the American version of Osama Bin Laden; a religious fanatic who attempted to incite war through violent terrorist acts. In my humble opinion, not a very good example for our children.
Shame on the author for glorifying this sick and demented man and shame on the people of Kansas for lionizing him. How are we to condemn the Middle-East’s glorification of terrorist when we do the same here?
His 1959 raid is credited as a major factor in starting the Civil War.
Really? Which Civil War? Because the AMERICAN Civil War started in 1861.
Y’all kill me with the mistakes here…
Michael’s “humble opinion” that John Brown is not “a very good example for our children,” and his condescending and ruthlessly ignorant assault on John Hendrix reflects the kind of malignant prejudice that still exists in many people’s thinking on Brown. First, Michael, the five men killed by Brown and his men were not “unarmed Southerners,” but five Southern conspirators aiding and directing Southern terrorists with the intention of exterminating the Browns. There is a great deal of ignorance on the subject. Hendrix recognizes that Brown’s actions were harsh and violent but that is not reason to consider them in history, even for young people. Far worse has been masked and presented to young people in history texts for years, except it involved protecting the violence and murderous treatment of blacks and Indians. Secondly, Michael, Brown was neither sick nor demented, and Hendrix understands, as do many of the good folks in Kansas, that John Brown was sane, noble, and self-sacrificing. Shame on “Michael” for being so ignorant and jaded by prejudice. He knows nothing about Brown yet he talks with the audacity of a made-over “border ruffian.”
Thanks for typo catch, Ucity88. I have fixed that and I added a quote from the book to help illustrate the text.
On Pottawatomie, Hendrix writes: “John and his sons stormed the houses of five pro-slavery settlers who had been threatening his family and other abolitionists, took the men to the creek, and killed them with broadswords.
“John’s ruthless tactics spread fear into the hearts of the Border Ruffians and others, but also branded John a crazed madman. Captain John Brown, as he came to be known, was a folk hero to many free-staters and an outlaw to the federal government. It was a savage and brutal period in what came to be known as ‘Bleeding Kansas.’”
Louis,
You certainly are a condescending justifier of murder aren‘t you? You would fit in well as a spokesmen for the PLO or Al Qaeda. I don’t think it is a far fetched assumption to believe that if you lived in the Middle East you would be standing up for terrorist calling them “sane, noble, self-sacrificing” freedom fighters.
I’ve always wondered why some in the Middle-East want to indoctrinate their children in hate, perpetuating the death culture they live in. Sadly, in America there are people like you, who also want to glorify terrorism. That’s fine if you want to justify chopping people up into little bits as the work of a “noble“ man, but could you please leave our children out of your sadistic celebration?
Justifying Brown’s terrorist actions against our nation is especially sad the day before we commemorate 9/11. Will people like you be writing children’s books about the “noble” Osama Bin Laden in 150 years? After all, Osama just wanted to free his people from the tyrannical U.S. government.
John Brown is of little historical significance and it is a shame that some people in Kansas and Missouri are attempting to make a “mountain” out of a mere “mole hill” of a man. Louis, you clearly think of yourself as an expert on John Brown, but with most history there are many sides to a situation and calling someone a racist for having a different opinion on the actions of John Brown is despicable. You are the worst type of person. The facts are that John Brown took sadistic pleasure in dismantling fellow Americans(splitting their skulls and cutting their hands off). I feel sorry for people like you, resorting to name calling, merely because I don’t agree with your argument, which basically comes down to; Those rednecks were going to kill his whole family so he had to pull them out of bed at night, kill them and of course he had to mutilate there bodies, what else would a noble, sane, self-sacrificing man do. Let’s say your right, John Brown was sane and noble and did help start the Civil War. Congratulations, he then is responsible for 600,000 American deaths. If that is your type of hero, you are sick. Stay away from my kids!
It is more than coincidence that the Kansas home for the insane was located very near John Brown’s house. Neither he nor Quantrill were remotely admirable men. They were both “terrorists.”
Michael
No, I’m a biographer of John Brown, I’ve studied him for years, and I know more about the man than about 99.9 percent of the people now alive. That’s what happens when you study a subject instead of blow off a lot of hot air. If I came off as condescending, it’s because you came off as worse, and believe me, I really do have to condescend to talk to people like you about John Brown because you do not deal at the level of historical fact and context, but from preconceived notions, half-facts, and prejudice.
If I can justify what Brown did in Kansas, I can do so on the basis of historical fact and political realities at the time. You deal in stereotypes, and your approach to John Brown is tantamount to that party game where one phrase is whispered from person to person until it ends up a distortion of the original.
As to significance, your arrogant judgment only reflects your own indifference to liberation and, probably, to the concerns of minority people. Had you any sensibility besides what you found in the backpockets of your grandpa’s smelly old war pants, you’d understand that Brown is a seminal figure. He not only represents a liberator to generations of African Americans, but to many whites across the political spectrum, from old school Republicans to liberals, he represents the best efforts of the best kind of people in our nation who sought to do justice. I wonder how many US figures that you consider “of significance” were slave holders and Indian killers?
I won’t even waste time contradicting the nonsensical venom you shot toward me and Brown. We all know the source of venom. And if you are the venemous creature you seem to be, your children ought to be avoided as well, for they will likely bear your poison into another generation.
The truth is the South made Texas a slave state for the cause of inhumanity and slave breeders.. Governor Quitman of Mississippi and Jeff Davis wanted to annex Cuba for a stronger slave Confederacy. The whip, knife and burned at the stake was for those that wanted to kill their kidnappers/masters or think of insurrection or if they dare escape. Virginia and Kentucky were slave breeding slave states where Black Women were raped and forced to have mulattoes and often the master/father sell their own off spring for profit. Gee nice people! The hated slave was always on the masters mind in fear of “insurrection” at any moment. In todays world kidnappers that sexually abuse their victims or make them do forced labor deserve the death penalty. These slaves were nothing but victims of kidnappers on slave ships and slave breeding states. The slave experienced/suffered from stochholme syndrome being manipuated with threats and torture like you see today.
In Germany during the Nazi Oppression if John Brown were to have killed Germans too help Jewish Concentration Camp victims escape to England or America he would been hailed a humanitarian.
But! because Jeff Davis supported tyranny he is a southern idol to some even though “states rights was assisting slave breeders do the work of the devil for the benefit of the slaves master.” (Southern Churches and Politcans gave verbal support for the inhumane treatment of Slaves)
In Kansas the proslavery men from Alabama wanted to make Kansas a slave oppressed territory and the late terrorist Jefferson Buford (From Alabama) in 1856 sold 40 human beings held against their will and used the profits for his campaign of terror, oppression and promote inhumanity in Kansas. Henry Titus from Florida did the same and when John Brown would help fugitive slaves escape from tyranny Titus and Buford would help kidnapp the slave property back and give the fugitive(seeking freedom) to the master again for the cause of inhumanity and the work of the devil.
John Brown is a hero for his work in Kansas and Harpers Ferry.
The Southern cause is lost and should be buried with the evils of Nazi Germany.
No, Sarah Bryan Miller, if true, it is mere coincidence that you cite. Brown was sane and he was no terrorist. Get it straight, you and the rest of you lacking-in-information pharisees of history, Brown was a counter-terrorist. Terrorism existed in the US in the form of chattel slavery and white supremacy. Terrorism was legalized and reaffirmed in the Fugitive Slave Act. Terrorism was imported into the Kansas territory by Missouri terrorists and others from throughout the South who were intent upon forcing black people to become slaves in Kansas by forcing the white free state majority to accept slavery by threat, murder, and terrorism. John Brown and others who fought back were men who understood that the US government had no intention of allowing democracy to function in the territory, let alone actually practice justice for enslaved people. John Brown killed a few men to save his family and community from certain terrorist assault. The same cannot be said for that wicked frontier gangster and racist, Quantrill. Quantrill was not mad either. He was evil. He was a politicized mass murderer and there is nothing heroic in his life or biography–quite in contrast to Brown. Your alleged insight is a fraud; sort of like someone suggesting that if you lived close by a dairy farm, you must be a cow. It is not even a notable coincidence, let alone “more than a coincidence.”
The Republican Party of the North was Sectional and when John C. Fremont was nominated by the “Black Republican Party,” Fremont in many papers was named in print the Black Republican Candidate.
The Black Republican’s were the party of politics with Sharpes Rifles and Gun Powder. In June of 1857 John Brown and Gerritt Smith were in Milwaukee at a Radical Republican Rally of antislavery men. John Brown or Captain Brown was denoted the hero of Osawatomie, ” when his name was called out.
In 1856 when Frederick Douglass canvassed for Fremont he put some coals in the fire of rhetoric “that it was the duty of slave to cut the master’s throat.
Black Republican Congressman Joshua R. Giddings (OHIO) quote: “wage a war of extermination against his master—-when the torch of incendiary shall light up the towns of the South, and blot out the last vestige of salvery; and though I may not mock the calamity, nor laugh when their fear cometh
, Yet I will hail it as the dawn of a political millennium.”
In a Lynchburg News paper dated May of 1860 reported “The Black Republican Nominations—Lincoln and Hamlin
In a newspaper in Virginia–The Old Dominion - published October 5, 1863
“To our secesssion people we would say, in (Major Bovay, Provost Marshal, Wisconsin Infantry) Major Bovay you have had an opportunity to see and know a genuine speciemen of the Black Republican.” He is a man of position
and influence in his part in his own state (Wisconsin), and is one of a class not too numerous, who did not come to Dixie to conceal his opinions.”
Hon. Alvan Bovay father of the Wisconsin Republican Party…
He supported the Kansas Emigrant Aid Associations and with the men armed with Sharpes Rifles to defend and destroy the proslavery movemnt.