In honor of Black History Month Am Kolel welcomes Gene Meyer, an prominent journalist and the author of Five for Freedom: the African American Soldiers in John Brown’s Army. RSVP to receive the Zoom invite.  

On October 16, 1859, John Brown and his band of eighteen raiders descended on Harpers Ferry. In an ill-fated attempt to incite a slave insurrection, they seized the federal arsenal, took hostages, and retreated to a fire engine house where they barricaded themselves until a contingent of US Marines battered their way in on October 18. The raiders were routed, and several were captured. Soon after, they were tried, convicted, and hanged. Among Brown’s fighters were five African American men—John Copeland, Shields Green, Dangerfield Newby, Lewis Leary, and Osborne Perry Anderson—whose lives and deaths have long been overshadowed by their martyred leader and who, even today, are little remembered. Five for Freedom is the story of these five brave men. Join author Eugene L. Meyer for a lecture about the lives of these men.

Eugene L. Meyer is an award-winning journalist and author and a former longtime reporter and editor at the Washington Post whose work has also appeared in the New York Times, U.S. News & World Report, and many other national and regional publications. He is a contributing editor for Bethesda magazine and lives in Silver Spring, Maryland.

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