Shields Green

Shields Green (1836? – December 16, 1859), who also referred to himself as "Emperor", was, according to Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave from Charleston, South Carolina, and a leader in John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, in October 1859. He had lived for almost two years in the house of Douglass, in Rochester, New York, and Douglass introduced him there to Brown. Although Green survived the raid unwounded, he was tried, convicted, and executed by hanging on December 16, 1859, together with three other raiders. All the trials and executions took place in Charles Town, West Virginia (at the time Charlestown, Virginia), county seat of Jefferson County. At John Brown's execution two weeks prior, very few spectators were permitted, for security reasons. Now there were no restrictions, the judge wanted the executions to be seen by the public, and there were 1,600 spectators. At the time, legal as well as illegal hangings were entertainment. Green was the only one from the raid on Harpers Ferry that Frederick Douglass mentioned alongside iconic rebels Nat Turner and Denmark Vesey; Douglass "eulogized [him] with rare pathos". In an article on courageous negroes who revolted he is mentioned alongside Douglass himself and Haitian leader Jean-Jacques Dessalines. In Silas X. Floyd's Floyd's Flowers, or Duty and Beauty for Colored Children, Green is a Black hero like Crispus Attucks, Toussaint l'Ouverture, or Benjamin Banneker. Floyd calls him a martyr.