The October 15 issue of the Washington Post featured a story, “From Civil War to Civil Rights,” on the 150th anniversary this week of John Brown’s raid on the armory and arsenal at Harpers Ferry. The author, Michael E. Ruane, argues that Harpers Ferry is a complex tourist destination—and as such well suited for our times—because John Brown was simultaneously a freedom fighter and a terrorist. He's right. It is as easy to understand why Brown is celebrated as an abolitionist martyr as it is to relate to the rage that animated those who hanged him. Ruane does a nice job, too, of extolling the virtues of Harpers Ferry National Historic Park, which has turned this town of 307 souls into one of this region’s best day trips.
Everyone knows that Harpers Ferry was the overture to an American tragedy, the Civil War. What isn’t as widely known is that the town played a key role in civil rights history. In 1881, Frederick Douglass delivered a moving eulogy to John Brown. In 1906, Storer College, a historically black institution in Harpers Ferry, hosted what W.E.B. Dubois called “one of the greatest meetings that American Negroes ever held.” Storer College, ironically enough, expired in 1955, a victim of Brown v. Board of Education.
I hope that those who come this way again will take the road that leads to Harpers Ferry.
The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
It is ironic that you post the Frost Poem when talking about Harpers Ferry. A few years back I had an opportunity to hike part of the Appalachian Trail starting at Harpers Ferry and hiking south. On the trail we took part of Robert Frost's poem to and used it as somewhat of a guide. Anytime we had two choices in a path we always said, "two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference." I still use that saying today and it has brought me down many new paths sometimes good and often times bad.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Terry. What an old man notices in the poem is this stanza:
ReplyDeleteAnd both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.