Today we might call John Beeson a principled civil rights activist. In his own time, he was called a fanatic and a depraved liar, and a lot worse... because he stuck up for the rights and fair treatment of the native people of Oregon, just as settlers and the U.S. government were pushing them off their long-occupied homelands.
His 1857 book A Plea for the Indians was reprinted in the 1980s, sparking new interest in Beeson and his unusual, and unusually vocal, viewpoint.
Jan Wright, a Rogue Valley historian, wrote her own book on Beeson, Oregon Outcast, and she'll talk about Beeson's life in an upcoming session at the Hannon Library at Southern Oregon University (April 11th). We visit with Jan Wright about Beeson and his way-ahead-of-his-time views.