I grew up in a town in Ohio where John Brown built a tannery (well before the Civil War). That building was fucking well-built and was still standing after more than a century of total neglect, but in the mid-70s some Republicans on the city council had it condemned and torn down over the space of three days, too fast for anyone to take legal action to stop it. Ironically, they initially couldn't tear it down and had to bring in heavy-duty demolition equipment to bring it down; at one point they were considering explosives. Today it is - you guessed it - a parking lot, ironically enough for a walking trail along the river.

They probably had it torn down just out of general hatred of history, not because John Brown was an abolitionist. Back then, even though Republicans were still assholes, they generally had the same distaste for slavery as everybody else. It took the Reagan Revolution (which kicked off the 1980 election cycle in Philadelphia, Mississippi for some reason) to make racism cool again.