LAKE PLACID — John Brown Day 2023, set for Saturday, May 13, will be dedicated to the late award-winning novelist Russell Banks, who died in January.

His 1998 novel, “Cloudsplitter,” revived popular interest in the abolitionist martyr, who is buried at the John Brown Farm State Historic Site in Lake Placid, where the event will be held from 2 to 4 p.m.

It was Banks, with the late Noel Ignatiev (author/historian/race theorist) and others, who sounded the call in 1999 to “those who share the vision of a country without racial walls” to gather at the John Brown Farm to renew the abolitionist’s legacy.

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101 year rite

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The tradition of pilgrimage to lay a wreath on Brown’s grave was started in 1922 by Philadelphians Dr. Jesse Max Barber and Dr. T. Spotuas Burwell to honor, as Barber put it, “this great friend of the race.”

Every May, well into the 1980s, groups organized by the John Brown Memorial Association (JBMA) traveled from Philadelphia, New York City, Chicago, and elsewhere to the Brown family homestead to keep Brown’s memory alive.

“It’s not an exaggeration to say that Russell revived John Brown Day on May 9, 1999, after a decade or more had lapsed since the last organized pilgrimage,” Martha Swan, executive director of John Brown Lives!, said in a press release.

“When we gather this year, he will be in our collective hearts, with love and gratitude and a sense of profound loss, too.”

This year’s observance will start Tuesday afternoon on Brown’s birthday, May 9, with the unveiling of A Memorial Field with Ren Davidson Seward at the John Brown Farm site.

Later that evening, choreographer Tiffany Rea-Fisher will screen her dance film, “Geography of Grace,” at the Lake Placid Center for the Arts.

“Both Tiffany and Ren are Creatives Rebuild New York-funded artist-collaborators working with John Brown Lives! whose truth-telling art is imbued with compassion and love,” Swan said.

“Working together has been a joyful answer to our prayers.”

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Memorial Field 4.0

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For Seward, 2023 marks year four of her Memorial Field installations at the farm.

“It’s a new version of it,” she said.

“It is graphically handled differently. Basically, I redesigned the Memorial Field. People had said it was overwhelming. It was too depressing. It made me think about how to make space for people to remember and honor the lives lost without becoming overwhelmed.”

Seward separated the victims from the incidents.

“The victims are now on one side of the memorials in sort of a clear space, and on the backside the incidents themselves are now presented with the place where they happened. I think when people see it, it will become really clear. It allows people to have a place to go where it’s not so brutally overwhelming to read the incidents.”

Aesthetically, previous iterations looked like a cemetery with incidents graphically on both sides of the panels.

“This year, it doesn’t look like a cemetery,” Seward said.

“It has a very different graphic treatment that I don’t want to give away. I had committed to working on this Memorial Field for five years. It continues to evolve every year. Last year, I introduced ‘Spiraling Around the Promise of the Right to Vote.’ This year, the Memorial Field is going to be cited differently, so that it’s more in dialogue with Spiraling ‘Round the Right to Vote. I think people will see instantly how different it is.”

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Facilitated dialogues

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Seward focused on having more facilitated dialogues in the Memorial Field this year.

“So, we are planning weekly dialogues in July and August on Thursday afternoon at 3 for anyone who happens to be there or anyone who wants to participate,” she said.

“I am inviting different professional facilitators to come and help create a space where people feel comfortable talking about difficult subjects.”

Last summer, The Wild Center facilitated a dialogue for its board in the Memorial Field.

“They are repeating that this summer, and we’re going to expand it into regular weekly offerings,” Seward said.

“So that’s one thing that is happening. The other thing is focusing on what is being done to try to change policing in America so people aren’t left feeling hopeless when they see the installation, to try and help people feel more empowered to act and help people find ways to have agency to encourage changes in policing in America.”