Spotlight: Harriet Tubman, Breaking Down Barriers!!!
The Conductor!!!
First Name Tom, Last Name Foolery… And I’m Everybody’s Uncle!
Especially this awesome conductor… Harriet Tubman.
Harriet Tubman was an escaped enslaved woman who became a “conductor” on the Underground Railroad, leading enslaved people to freedom before the Civil War, all while carrying a bounty on her head. But she was also a nurse, a Union spy and a women’s suffrage supporter. Tubman is one of the most recognized icons in American history & her legacy has inspired countless people from every race & background.
Harriet Tubman was born around 1820 on a plantation in Dorchester County, Maryland. Her parents, Harriet (“Rit”) Green & Benjamin Ross, named her Araminta Ross & called her “Minty.”
Rit worked as a cook in the plantation’s “big house,” & Benjamin was a timber worker. Araminta later changed her first name to Harriet in honor of her mother.
Harriet had eight brothers & sisters, but the realities of slavery eventually forced many of them apart, despite Rit’s attempts to keep the family together. When Harriet was five years old, she was rented out as a nursemaid where she was whipped when the baby cried, leaving her with permanent emotional & physical scars.
Around age seven Harriet was rented out to a planter to set muskrat traps & was later rented out as a field hand. She later said she preferred physical plantation work to indoor domestic chores.
Harriet’s desire for justice became apparent at age 12 when she spotted an overseer about to throw a heavy weight at a fugitive. Harriet stepped between the enslaved person and the overseer—the weight struck her head.
She later said about the incident, “The weight broke my skull … They carried me to the house all bleeding & fainting. I had no bed, no place to lie down on at all, & they laid me on the seat of the loom, & I stayed there all day & the next.”
Harriet’s good deed left her with headaches & narcolepsy the rest of her life, causing her to fall into a deep sleep at random. She also started having vivid dreams & hallucinations which she often claimed were religious visions (she was a staunch Christian). Her infirmity made her unattractive to potential slave buyers & renters.
In 1840, Harriet’s father was set free & Harriet learned that Rit’s owner’s last will had set Rit & her children, including Harriet, free. But Rit’s new owner refused to recognize the will & kept Rit, Harriett & the rest of her children in bondage.
Around 1844, Harriet married John Tubman, a free Black man, & changed her last name from Ross to Tubman. The marriage was not good, & the knowledge that two of her brothers—Ben & Henry—were about to be sold provoked Harriet to plan an escape.
On September 17, 1849, Harriet, Ben & Henry escaped their Maryland plantation. The brothers, however, changed their minds & went back. With the help of the Underground Railroad, Harriet persevered & traveled 90 miles north to Pennsylvania & freedom.
Tubman found work as a housekeeper in Philadelphia, but she wasn’t satisfied living free on her own—she wanted freedom for her loved ones & friends, too.
She soon returned to the south to lead her niece & her niece’s children to Philadelphia via the Underground Railroad. At one point, she tried to bring her husband John north, but he’d remarried & chose to stay in Maryland with his new wife.
The 1850 Fugitive Slave Act allowed fugitive & freed workers in the north to be captured & enslaved. This made Harriet’s job as an Underground Railroad conductor much harder & forced her to lead enslaved people further north to Canada, traveling at night, usually in the spring or fall when the days were shorter.
She carried a gun for both her own protection & to “encourage” her charges who might be having second thoughts. She often drugged babies & young children to prevent slave catchers from hearing their cries.
Over the next ten years, Harriet befriended other abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass, Thomas Garrett and Martha Coffin Wright, & established her own Underground Railroad network. It’s widely reported she emancipated 300 enslaved people; however, those numbers may have been estimated & exaggerated by her biographer Sarah Bradford, since Harriet herself claimed the numbers were much lower.
Nevertheless, it’s believed Harriet personally led at least 70 enslaved people to freedom, including her elderly parents, & instructed dozens of others on how to escape on their own. She claimed, “I never ran my train off the track & I never lost a passenger.”
Climb on The Family Tree below & share your thoughts about My Niece Harriet Tubman’s barrier breaking situation.
By: History
Image(s): Getty
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