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John Brown’s body lies a-moldering in the grave, John Brown’s body lies a-moldering in the grave, John Brown’s body lies a-moldering in the grave, But his soul goes marching on.

Starting at 9 a.m., about 3,000 black schoolchildren paraded around the race track holding roses and singing the Union song "John Brown's Body," and were followed by adults representing aid societies for freed black men and women.

In addition to Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman, Brown’s admirers included the poet Julia Ward Howe, wife of the “Secret Six” member Samuel Gridley Howe, who took a popular folk song about Brown, “John Brown’s Body,” and turned it into “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

In his 2005 edited collection of essays “The Afterlife of John Brown,” Eldrid Herrington, a professor of English, wrote, “John Brown’s body revives whenever the United States shames itself, when the body politic bears wounds, when it imprisons citizens without trial, or prosecutes an unjust war in an unjust manner.”

His church still sang “John Brown’s Body,” a 19th century marching song popularized by Black Union regiments during the Civil War and sung in Emancipation Day festivities and later adapted by professional choral groups of the era, like the Fisk Jubilee Singers.