In honor of Black History Month, we highlight the life and work of Harriet Tubman.
February 15, 2025
Born into slavery on Maryland's Eastern Shore in 1822, Tubman was named Araminta by her enslaved parents, Ben and Rit Ross. Nearly killed at the age of 13 by a blow to her head, "Minty" recovered and grew strong and determined to be free.
Changing her name to Harriet upon her marriage to freeman John Tubman in 1844, she escaped five years later when her enslaver died and she was to be sold. One hundred dollars was offered for her capture. Vowing to return to bring her family and friends to freedom, she spent the next ten years making about 13 trips into Maryland to rescue them. She also gave instructions to about 70 more who found their way to freedom independently.
Tubman successfully used the skills she had learned while working on the wharves, fields and woods, observing the stars and natural environment and learning about the secret communication networks of free and enslaved African Americans to affect her escapes. She later claimed she never lost a passenger. The famous abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison called her "Moses," and the name stuck.
A lifelong humanitarian and civil rights activist, she formed friendships with abolitionists, politicians, writers and intellectuals. She knew Frederick Douglass and was close to John Brown and William Henry Seward. She was particularly close with suffragists Lucretia Coffin Mott, Martha Coffin Wright, and Susan B. Anthony. Intellectuals in New England's progressive circles, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Lloyd Garrison, Bronson Alcott, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Franklin B. Sanborn, and Mrs. Horace Mann, befriended her, and her work was heralded beyond the United States.
During the Civil War, she served the United States Army as a spy, scout, nurse and cook. In early 1862, Tubman traveled to South Carolina to provide badly needed nursing care for African American soldiers and civilians. Working with Major General David Hunter, Tubman also began spying and scouting behind Confederate lines.
On June 1, 1863, she joined Colonel James Montgomery and his 2nd South Carolina Infantry, composed of emancipated slaves, in an assault on several plantations along the Combahee River. This raid rescued more than 700 enslaved people, many of whom later enlisted in the Union army. These actions weakened the Confederate economy while providing the Union army with more soldiers. Her role in the raid was celebrated in the press, increasing her fame.
Tubman showed the same zeal and passion for the campaign to attain women's suffrage after the American Civil War as she had shown for the abolition of slavery.
Harriet Tubman died in 1913 in Auburn, New York at the home she purchased from Secretary of State William Seward in 1859, where she established the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged. She was buried with military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery.
The movie Harriet, classified as historical fiction, was directed by Kasi Lemmons and written by Gregory Allen Howard, and was released in November of 2019. The film won Academy Awards, Golden Globe Awards and Screen Actors Guild Awards.
The film engages in history about the Underground Railroad and slavery during the 1800s. It follows the journey of Harriet Tubman, one of the most important figures in the American abolishment movement who escapes slavery and helps numerous others reach freedom. Despite minor divergences from actual history, the film does a fairly accurate job at depicting the events of Harriet’s life and her involvement in the Underground Railroad.
The film dives immediately into her journey towards Philadelphia, one which takes her 100 miles. The film states this accurately and depicts true events from her journey, such as the scene where she stretches her hands out towards the sun as she crosses the Pennsylvania border. After she reaches freedom, the movie accurately depicts how Harriet went back to Maryland for her loved ones and found her husband remarried. It also does a good job showing the complexity of documenting the history of slavery through William Still and his effort to record former slaves’ experiences and family lineage. The scene of him writing down “possible brain damage” instead of directly transcribing Tubman’s words reveals how much record keepers have the power to shape history. Other historically accurate aspects of the film include Harriet’s use of pistols, her godly visions, and the overall depiction of slavery in the 1800s. According to one of the class lectures, there was a hardening of the slave system after the revolution and people believed slave owner’s rights to property trumped the rights of enslaved people. Militias in the south policed slavery rather than engaging in outside threats, and we see this in the film based on the slave owners’ dedication to capture Harriet.
(Information gathered from Wikipedia, AI Overview, and the National Park Service)
Re-imagining Harriet Tubman by Dr. Kate Clifford Larson, a New York Times bestselling author. (adapted excerpt)
In 2017, the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History acquired a previously unknown photograph of Harriet Tubman depicting the historical figure as young and stylish, closer to what she would have looked like during her days as an operative of the Underground Railroad. The feature film came in 2019. Harriet garnered critical acclaim and received great attention during the 2020 Award’s season. These images are changing the way we remember this important American icon.
This is a remarkable turn of events considering Harriet Tubman's long journey to full recognition for her significant contributions to our national heritage. Until recently, two nineteenth century biographies by Victorian author Sarah Bradford remained a staple of Tubman literature. Then Chicago Defender editor and reporter Earl Conrad published a new account called General Tubman in 1943. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s brought renewed attention to African American history and historical figures, sparking a flood of children’s books about the formerly enslaved Underground Railroad superhero. By the 1980s, Tubman's life story remained a staple of mainstream juvenile literature and elementary school reading lists, but not adult nonfiction.
Those 20th-century children’s books secured Tubman's place in the pantheon of American heroes. When several academic biographies of Tubman were published in the early 2000s, Tubman finally received the scholarly attention she deserved. New primary research and fresh interpretation challenged long held folklore and misperceptions. This research shines a bright light on Harriet Tubman's extraordinary long life. She fought for freedom, equality, justice, and self-determination through self-emancipation. Tubman rescued about 70 people through the Underground Railroad. She was an anti-slavery activist and served as a Civil War spy and scout. She campaigned for women's suffrage, health care, and civil rights. Through homeownership and entrepreneurship, she provided shelter and food to the homeless, disabled, and the poor. Her leadership persisted despite enduring daily injustices deeply rooted in racism, discrimination and bigotry. Only a theatrical film celebrating that life was missing.
Harriet, the film, illustrates Tubman's deep and loving relationships with her siblings, parents, and husband, John. Tubman's fierce determination to liberate her loved ones is beautifully fleshed out within the very real context of the physical, political, and personal resistance slaveholders employed to thwart those efforts. The film takes some liberties with Tubman's story — this is not a documentary — but weaves real-life characters and situations with fictional ones, illuminating the many complicated truths about slavery and the struggle for freedom experienced by millions of enslaved people whose names we do not know.
Inspiration and Meditation: Stand Up Harriet (video link), theme music from the film, Harriet, sung by Cynthia Erivo; co-written by Cynthia Erivo with Joshuah Brian Campbell (2019).
And, 50 years after the death of Harriet Tubman …
I Have A Dream by Martin Luther King, Jr. (an excerpt)
… I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.
I have a dream that one day out in the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by their character.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; that one day right down in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be engulfed, every hill shall be exalted and every mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plains and the crooked places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.
This is our hope. This is the faith that I will go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.
With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.
With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to climb up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.
This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning “My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my father’s died, land of the Pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!”
And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.
Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.
Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.
But not only that, let freedom, ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi and every mountainside.
When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every tenement and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old spiritual:
“Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.”
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