Russell Banks (Provided photo — Nancie Battaglia)

LAKE PLACID — Three events this week, concluding with John Brown Day this Saturday, are commemorating Black freedom and abolitionist history in the Adirondacks, connecting Adirondack history with current human rights issues, and celebrating artists and the arts.

John Brown Day 2023 on Saturday will be dedicated to the award-winning novelist Russell Banks, who died in January of this year. It was Bank’s 1998 novel, “Cloudsplitter,” that revived popular interest in John Brown. It was Banks, with the late Noel Ignatiev 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.

The tradition of pilgrimage to lay a wreath on Brown’s grave was started in 1922 by Black 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 Memorials 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,” said John Brown Lives Executive Director Martha Swan. “When we gather this year, he will be in our collective hearts, with love and gratitude and a sense of profound loss, too.”

There will be a John Brown Day ceremony from 2 to 4 p.m. at the John Brown Farm, followed by a ticketed reception from 5 to 7 p.m. at Cascade Welcome Center, 4833 Cascade Road.

Reception tickets are $40 per person. For more information or to reserve reception tickets, email info@johnbrownlives.org or call 518-744-7112.

The birthday of abolitionist John Brown was observed on Tuesday afternoon, May 9, with the unveiling of “A Memorial Field” with Ren Davidson Seward at the John Brown Farm State Historic Site. Later that evening, choreographer Tiffany Rea-Fisher screened her dance film, “Geography of Grace,” at the Lake Placid Center for the Arts. Inspired by the 1846 “scheme of justice and benevolence” to secure voting rights for Black men in New York state, “Geography of Grace” was filmed on site at the historic Brown family homestead. A conversation with Rea-Fisher, filmmaker Moti Margolin, and Swan preceded the screening.