In 1859, abolitionist John Brown and his followers seized the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, hoping to start a rebellion among enslaved Black people in the South. The uprising failed, and Brown was captured, tried, and sentenced to death. Thomas Hovenden’s image of Brown portrays him as a Moses-like prophet or Christ-like martyr. Yet, contrary to this depiction, Brown was not a singular hero—he was supported by and worked alongside numerous Black individuals fighting for their own freedom.

While Brown’s vision of freedom for those enslaved in the United States was supposedly achieved by the Civil War (1861–1865), the subsequent Reconstruction era (1865–1877) was a brutal and vindictive period during which Jim Crow laws codified racism and mob lynchings.