The Miracle of Social Change

August 16, 2020

Ken Stern

In August of 1859 slavery seemed like it would last forever in the United States. Then, in September, John Brown and a small band attacked Harper's Ferry, Virginia. Sixteen months later seven southern states panicked at the prospect of Lincoln taking office and seceded from the Union in January, 1861, before he was inaugurated. And that is why the Civil War began. From Thoreau, who gave a talk on John Brown, through Frederick Douglass, the suffragists movement and women gaining the vote, to African Americans insisting on Civil Rights in the 1950s, to Black Lives