"Leaving their farmhouse hideout at night, a band of wannabe saviors brimming with revolt made their way to a West Virginia hamlet one early October morning. But their plans soon went awry. Instead of seizing a federal weapons cache and inciting a massive resistance, the band wound up captured or killed by the U.S. government.
Many people have heard of John Brown’s 1859 raid, a story preserved at Harpers Ferry National Historic Park. There, the white abolitionist led a brazen attack in hopes of ending slavery. We think of John Brown as a prescient man, a wise man, a hero.
But his boldness was not unprecedented. Other men had been conspiring and revolting to end slavery in America since colonial times. They, too, were prescient, wise, and heroic: they were Black, and they were enslaved.
From the 1960s to the present, the National Park Service (NPS) has been documenting or preserving sites where people risked everything for freedom. The agency has left its stamp on at least 15 sites that include the largest slave revolts in the South, across three states and nearly 100 years of history."
Sue Eisenfeld reports for National Parks Traveler September 8, 2025.
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