Third Thursday Presentation Norman Thomas Marshall
Hartford, CT) – Actor Norman Thomas Marshall gave a short reenactment followed by a discussion on the life of Abolitionist John Brown, on Thursday, February 21, 2019, at the Connecticut State Library.
The year 2019 will mark the 160 year anniversary of John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry. John Brown was an American abolitionist who believed in and advocated armed insurrection as the only way to overthrow the institution of slavery in the United States. Born in Torrington, Connecticut in 1800, Brown first gained national attention when he led small groups of volunteers during the Bleeding Kansas crisis of 1856. On October 1859, Brown led a raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (today West Virginia), intending to start a slave liberation movement that would spread south through the mountainous regions of Virginia and North Carolina. He seized the armory, but seven people were killed, and ten or more were injured. He intended to arm slaves with weapons from the arsenal, but only a small number of local slaves joined his revolt.
Marshall’s talk is part of the State Library and Museum of Connecticut History’s Third Thursday Brownbag Lunchtime Speaker series. This series features a variety of speakers on various aspects of Connecticut history. All programs are free and open to the public and attendees should feel free to bring their lunch.
About the Speaker: In his1967 New York debut, Norman Thomas Marshall played the title role in the Judson Poets Theatre production of the Theatre of the Ridiculous classic, Gorilla Queen by Ronald Tavel. Since then he has participated in several hundred plays, films, soap operas, voice overs, commercials and radio dramas as actor, director, producer and playwright with such stalwarts as Moses Gunn, F. Murray Abraham, David Hasselhoff, Burt Reynolds, Harvey Fierstein, Bette Midler, Christopher Lloyd, and Barbra Streisand. Since 1995, his attention has centered on John Brown: Trumpet of Freedom, a one-person play with thirty characters that has been performed several hundred times from California to Denmark.