STEVANUS MARIA LETSOIN yang dikenal dengan STEVEN LETSOIN dan pimpinan BLACK SWEET, lahir di ‘kampung TERI’, Pulau ‘Kimaam’ (Merauke) tahun 1954 dimana orang tuanya bertugas sebagai guru disana. Di awal tahun 70an, merantau ke Fak-Fak sampai menyelesaikan pendidikan SPG disana. Di Fak-Fak pula beliau mulai bermain musik sebagai pemain Bass. Sebenarnya beliau sudah mendapatkan tempat tugas sebagai guru di Agimuga tetapi tahun 1977 berangkat ke Merauke dan tertahan disana. Di Merauke mulai bermain di Band The Mars sebagai gitaris dan juga vocalis. Album perdana BB yang baru saja keluar saat itu, beliau yang menyanyikannya di band. Hanya setahun di Merauke, berangkat ke Jayapura dan kuliah di UNCEN lalu bergabung di band UNCEN bersama Eddy Pattipeiluhu, Robby Manengkey dan Yan Ulukyanan, juga di Band BPD Irian Jaya. Setelah Harry Letsoin & John Keff datang dan bergabung, mereka bermain di Band KODAM XVII Cenderawasih sampai berangkat di Jakarta dan dikenal denga
The rising price of cotton in the 1820s prompted an increased need and value of slaves particularly in the Deep South. Accordingly, Fed was sold to Starling Finney, a slave dealer, in 1830 and taken to Georgia. There, he was eventually sold for $350 to a cotton planter. Brown in his autobiography described Thomas Stevens as whipping his slaves every day.
Young Brown tried to run away from the Stevens plantation several times. In the last attempt he was caught and described what he called bells and horns placed around his neck and a circle of iron that fits around the crown of his head. The two torture objects were held together by three iron rods or horns that stuck out three feet above his head and had bells attached at the end of each rod. The entire contraption, which weighed about fourteen pounds, dissuaded Brown from attempting to escape the plantation again.
In 1845, Stevens’s son temporarily removed the “bell and horn,” and Brown made his escape. He allowed himself to be re-captured one year later and was sold to a planter in Louisiana where he became known as Benford. Escaping once more, he made his way to Indiana where he assumed his free name, John Brown. With the help of Quaker conductors on the Underground Railroad, Brown moved to Canada in 1847 where he was a copper miner. In 1849 Brown moved to Josiah Henson’s Dawn Institute in Kent County, Ontario where he was a carpenter, but in 1850, he moved to England. He worked there as a carpenter and then as a herbalist until his death in 1876 at the age of 56.
John Brown told his story to Louis Alexis Chamerovzow in 1854. It was published by the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society the next year. Chamerovzow explained in the Preface of the book, Slave Life in Georgia: A Narrative of the Life, Sufferings, and Escape of John Brown, A Fugitive Slave, Now in England, that telling John Brown’s travails as a slave would advance the anti-slavery cause by exposing the world to the horrible life of those still held in bondage.
Brown’s expose described the break-up of slave families and the fear instilled in slaves of punishment and exploitation, and cruel and severe treatment. The main message, however, was that John Brown never gave up his hope of freedom.
When he was able to break his own chains of slavery, he proved that he was a man equal to all others. He advanced himself by his own exertions, and set an example for others of his race to follow.
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