Kansas Jayhawks Video Portraying Murderous John Brown as Hero Creates Viral Backlash as Missouri Dominates in Rivalry Win

Michael Patrick Leahy
John Brown

A hype video released on the official X account of the Kansas Jayhawks football team ahead of its rivalry game with the Missouri Tigers that portrayed the Civil War abolitionist and murderer John Brown as a hero created a viral backlash that generated more than 36 million views on X.

The Southeastern Conference Missouri Tigers easily defeated the Big 12 Jayhawks 38 to 21 on Friday night, but the bad feelings created by the hype video continued after the game ended.

“I was embarrassed for them, to be honest. That’s why I tried to embarrass them at the end. . . We left Kansas bleeding again,”  Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz said in the post-game press conference.

Earlier on Friday, the Kansas Jayhawks released a one minute and 30 seconds hype video on the football team’s official X account, previewed with the words “It is that deep,” which can be viewed in its entirety here:

The text of the video, and the accompanying photographs portray John Brown, who murdered five Kansas settlers in 1856 but got away with it, clearly portrays Brown, who was executed in 1859 for leading an attack on the U.S. Army arsenal in Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, as a hero.

Here’s the full text:

Love doesn’t exist here.
Neither does mercy.
This rivalry is different because it’s built on something much deeper than just school pride.
It’s fueled by hatred passed down through generations.
Our roots reach back to the Civil War, when blood was spilled over what you believed in and which side you stood on.
There are heroes and villains.
Only allegiance decides their legacy.
There’s right and wrong.
There’s Kansas and Missouri.
In this rivalry, passion has its colors: crimson and blue, gold and black.
Colors that continue to clash.
When we collide, it goes beyond the game.
Rock Chalk, Jayhawk.

The video was narrated by former Kansas Jayhawk and NFL player Gilbert Brown, according to the website Awful Announcing.

The video starts with the visual title “Heroes and Villains,” and follows with various imagery of the pre-Civil War 1850s “Bleeding Kansas” era, described by the National Park Service as a time when, “murder, mayhem, destruction and psychological warfare became a code of conduct in Eastern Kansas and Western Missouri.”

The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 instituted a policy known as popular sovereignty in the Kansas Territory, allowing the settlers to decide by vote whether the territory would be admitted to the Union as a slave or free state. Activists from each side flooded the territory in an attempt to influence the outcome, leading to violent, often deadly, clashes that foreshadowed the national civil war to come.

The Kansas Historical Society describes John Brown’s role in the infamous 1856 Pottawotamie, Kansas massacre:

The term Bleeding Kansas began to appear in the press in the spring of 1856 when a number of guerrilla warfare activities occurred. One of these was called the Pottawatomie Massacre.

John Brown, a radical abolitionist, made his presence in Kansas known during May 1856. This event that gained Brown notoriety occurred a few days after the Sack of Lawrence when the Free State Hotel, the Lawrence newspaper office and other property were destroyed by Sheriff Jones and proslavery forces. It is generally believed that John Brown led four of his sons and three others in killing five pro-slavery men near Dutch Henry’s crossing on Pottawatomie Creek in Franklin County on May 24, 1856. The men killed were a James P. Doyle and his two sons William (22 years old) and Drury (20 years old), William Sherman, and Allen Wilkinson. Brown, who had come to Kansas in 1855, used religious and moral reasons to justify his actions.

The Pottawatomie Massacre, as the Brown killings were known, aroused emotions and distrust on both sides. It was denounced by Southern and even some Northern newspapers.

The website Civilwaronthewesternborder.org provides an even more graphic account of the massacre:

Around 10:00 p.m. on the 24th [of May, 1856], the Brown party left their campsite, headed for the cabin of proslavery settler James Doyle, and demanded that he and his sons come outside. They were led a short distance from the cabin, where John Brown shot James Doyle in the head with his pistol as two of Brown’s sons hacked James’s sons, Drury and William Doyle, to death with swords. A third son, 16-year-old John Doyle, was spared.

The party then traveled to Allen Wilkinson’s home, where, against the protestations of Wilkinson’s wife, who was sick with the measles, they took Wilkinson and hacked him to death, leaving his body alongside the road.

They then crossed to the south bank of the creek at Dutch Henry’s ford (named for “Dutch” Henry Sherman) and approached the home of James Harris. Here Brown’s group found several men and questioned them about their views on slavery and whether they had participated in the attack on Lawrence earlier in the week. William Sherman’s answers did not satisfy Brown, and he was killed behind the residence and his body left in the creek. The Browns then disappeared into the night.

At the 25 second mark of the Kansas Jayhawks Hype video, when the text reads “There are heroes…” an image of the murderous John Brown displays.

When the text continues to “. . .  and villains,”  an image of pro-slavery raider William Quantrill displays.

Responses to the hype video on X were almost universally negative. Here is a sampling of those responses:

“John Brown was a terrorist and would likely be a trans-terrorist if he were alive today,” Jackson Rowell wrote.

TJ Moe noted, “To demonstrate how stupid this video is: Columbia, Missouri (the location of Mizzou) stayed in the union (Missouri was split) and Mizzou’s mascot is named after the Union-aligned militia called the Missouri Tigers that stepped up to defend the town from Confederate guerilla raids.”

X user Texas Draco agreed, writing, “John Brown was a villain. If he were alive today he’d be one of these lunatics covered in piercings and tattoos interfering with ICE or trying to shoot Trump. I’ll be rooting for Missouri.”

“Yeah sorry, this is just retarded,” Caden Cox wrote, adding that John Brown was “[n]ot some folklore hero.”

“Not shocked that some 18 y/o girl intern in KU’s marketing department went ‘yeah, this is the one’ lol,” he wrote.

“I didn’t know that he said that, and if he did, that’s his prerogative to coach his team the way he wants to coach it. . . If he wants to keep trying to score, that’s his prerogative. It’s our job to try to stop him,” Kansas coach Lance Leipold said after the game, KU Sports reported.

Leipold made no comment about the hype video.

The Star News Network reached out to Kansas University Football, Kansas University Athletic Director Travis Goff, and Gilbert Brown for comment, but did not receive a response by press time.

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Michael Patrick Leahy is the founder and CEO of the Star News Network, which includes The Tennessee Star. Follow Leahy on X at @michaelpleahy.

 

 

 

 

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