TOM MORELLO To Receive "Spirit Of John Brown Freedom Award"

Billboard is reporting that Tom Morello, known for political activism as sharp and relentless as his guitar playing, will be among this year’s recipients of the Spirit of John Brown Freedom Award, along with choreographer Tiffany Rea-Fisher and visual artist Karen Davidson Seward, honoring the legacy of the 19th century abolitionist.

The award will be presented May 14 at the John Brown Farm State Historic Site, in the town of North Elba, just outside the village of Lake Placid, in the Adirondack Mountains, some 300 miles north of New York City.

In 1849, Brown brought his family to the then-wilderness region to support fellow abolitionist Gerrit Smith, who had given grants of Adirondack land to freed Black men, which qualified them to vote in New York State.

A decade later, Brown led a raid on federal armory at Harpers Ferry, West Va., intending to spark an insurrection to end slavery. The failed raid, which took place two years before the outbreak of the U.S. Civil War, was a watershed in the fight for racial justice in America. Brown was hung and laid to rest, at his request, on his Adirondack farm.

Read the full story at Billboard.com.

(Photo - Eitan Miskevich)