On This Day

On this day in 1859, John Brown led a raid on Harper's Ferry, trying to incite a slave revolt and ultimately destroy slavery in this country.

Defeated and on his way to be executed for treason, he handed a guard a note

I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.

He (fairly easily) predicted the Civil War.  But the racism and white privilege that underpinned slavery lives on one and a half centuries later.  I hope Brown's prediction has run its course.  I hope so, but I do not think so.