George P. Brown was a transplant from Ohio to McLean County. He was already well established in the educational community and had been the head of a large school in Indianapolis and president of the Indiana Normal University after the Civil War. He came to Bloomington in 1886 to work with the Illinois School Journal (later School and Home Education), a publication first edited by John W. Cook, the fourth president of ISNU. In Bloomington, Brown began his own publishing company that specialized in education materials. He lived at 304 East Walnut Street with his wife and four sons. Their home was a beautiful victorian house photographed for Illustrated Bloomington in 1896.
George P. Brown was not one to keep his opinions to himself. He wrote to the Pantagraph on a regular basis and was also the editor of the School and Home Education journal he published in Bloomington for many years. His publishing company published this journal as well as textbooks.
Brown would frequently comment on the status of schools in McLean County, which seems natural, given his experience and authority on this subject. But he also wrote to the Pantagraph his criticisms of the McLean County Gas Company, which led one of his neighbors, John T. Lilliard, to write refutations and lengthy arguments in opposition to Brown's opinions. In 1904 Brown wrote his explanation of the difference between socialism, anarchism and freedom. He gave Edward Bellamy credit for creating the idea of socialism, overlooking the actual creator of socialism -- Karl Marx. His comments were apparently made in response to statements being made by Charles R. Bales, a local man who argued for employee ownership of industry as an answer to poverty of the working man. Brown extolled the virtues of democracy that allowed each individual to seek his success free of the bounds of socialism (confusing capitalism and democracy).
When the President of ISNU resigned from his position after just one year at the helm in 1904, Brown wrote letters to the Pantagraph and a lengthy condemnation of this man in School and Home Education. In his view, this man had given up all claim to his own life by tying himself to ISNU and was a perfect scoundrel for considering his ability to earn more money elsewhere and live in a place more to his liking (Chicago). So much for freedom of the individual.
In 1903 Brown wrote a letter in response to an event in Danville, IL. In Danville James Wilson, an African American man, had been accused of assaulting a white woman near Alvon, IL. He was being held in the jail in Danville, where it was rumored a mob was forming to lynch Wilson. The men of the African American community decided to do what they could to prevent the lynching of Wilson and formed a human barrier around the jail. When the mob did appear, they stood their ground and the sheriff also appeared from within the jail, telling the mob to disperse. The sheriff even fired his gun into the mob several times, especially when members of the mob attempted to climb over the railing of the verandah or porch where he was standing. Several men were injured in their arms and hands when he shot at them as they attempted to climb over the railing. At one point shots were fired by one of the African American men protecting the jail and a white man was killed. The sheriff immediately brought the shooter into the jail and an attempt was made to prevent the mob from taking him away. But the mob broke through the walls of the jail and carried off the shooter, hung him from a telegraph pole and then burned his body on the courthouse lawn. The evening ended with the dispersal of the mob, and Wilson, the original prisoner, was saved from the lynch mob.
Brown's comments were in response to the fact that these riots were called race riots. He felt that calling them "race" riots exacerbated the problems and that no matter who had committed this assault, black or white, the result would have been the same, or had been the same in the past. He then made these statements, which must have been the "accepted truth" at the time for the readership of the Pantagraph:
It is quite possible that such offenders are and for some time in the future will be more numerous among the negro race. The race as a whole is not so far along in its spiritual evolution as are the most highly civilized white races. The beast is more apt to be stronger in them, than the white man. The white man's influence upon the black man since slavery began in this country has done more for the black man's intellect, than it has for his moral nature.
But we need to remember always that it is no fault of the black man that he is so large a part of our population. He was brought here against his will and it was not his own act that he was given his freedom, before he realized the responsibility that freedom imposes.
This opinion was obviously acceptable to the editors of the Pantagraph and to the population of the country as a whole (excluding the African American population, naturally). Imagine the feelings of the African American readers of the Pantagraph upon reading these words, written by a man who published the textbooks read by school children all over Illinois and who edited a magazine meant to inform the opinions of educators everywhere.