On October 17, 1859, abolitionist John Brown attacked Harpers Ferry to launch a war against slavery, and shortly after midnight his men shot and killed Heyward Shepherd, a free African American railroad baggage master. Seventy-two years later, on October 10, 1931, a crowd estimated at 300 Whites and 100 Blacks gathered to unveil and dedicate the Heyward Shepard monument. During the ceremony, voices both praised and denounced the monument. Conceived around the turn of the century, it endured controversy. In 1905, the United Daughters of the Confederacy said that erecting it would influence present and coming generations for good and show that slaveholding Southerners valued and respected the good qualities of enslaved people as no one else ever did or would do. In 1932, W.E.B. DuBois, founder of the Niagara Movement and a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, answered the monument with words honoring John Brown’s blow against slavery, the seven slaves and sons of slaves who fought with him, and the 200,000 Black soldiers and 4,000,000 freedmen who followed in the struggle for freedom.
