AKRON, Ohio – The Akron Zoo is hosting a rededication for the John Brown Monument on Sept. 28.

The German-American Alliance built the monument to honor the late abolitionist in 1910 in a wooded area of the zoo, located at 500 Edgewater Ave. The location was selected because it’s near where Brown and his family lived at Diagonal and Copley roads during the mid-1800s, according to the Summit County Historical Society .

Believing that violence was the only way to abolish slavery, Brown led an October 1859 raid on a federal armory in Harpers Ferry, Virginia, to try to start an armed revolt of enslaved people, according to the Akron Zoo . Sixteen people were killed during the raid, and Brown was convicted of murder, conspiracy and treason, and executed Dec. 2, 1859.

The original monument

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