Harriet Tubman: "The Black Moses"

Today is Harriet Tubman day in the USA and to celebrate, we are going to tell you all about this stunning woman.

Harriet Tubman was born Araminta "Minty" Ross to slave parents and as with many slaves in the USA, her exact date of birth wasn't recorded and estimates of the year of her birth are between 1820-25. Her maternal grandmother arrived on a slave ship to the US from Africa, but no other information about her ancestors is known. She was the fifth born of nine children.

Her mother, Harriet or "Rit", struggled to keep the family together as slavery tore it apart. Her owner Edward Brodess sold three of her daughters, separating them from the family forever. When a trader tried to buy her son Moses, she hid him for a month, aided by other slaves and free blacks in the community.When Brodess and the potential buyer finally came to seize the child, Rit told them "You are after my son; but the first man that comes into my house, I will split his head open." The sale was then abandoned. Tubman's biographers agree that this event influenced her belief in the possibilities of resistance.

As a child Harriet took care of her younger brother and a baby. At 5 or 6 she was hired as a nursemaid to watch a sleeping baby and when the baby woke and cried, Tubman was whipped. Later, to protect herself from the abuse she wrapped herself in layers of clothing but cried out as if she wasn't protected. Another time she bit a man's knee while receiving punishment; afterwards he kept his distance. She also worked for a planter and was ordered into nearby marshes to check the muskrat traps. Even after contracting measles she was sent into waist-high cold water. She became very ill and was sent back gone, to be nursed back to health by her mother. As she grew older she was assigned to gruelling field and forest work. One day as a teenager she was struck on the head by a 2 pound weight which was aimed at a different slave. She was sent back to her owners house and left without medical care for 2 days and then sent back to the fields. Her boss said she wasn't "worth a sixpence" and returned her to Brodess who tried unsuccessfully to sell her. She began having disabling seizures, headaches, powerful visionary and dream activity and spells of hypersomnia which occurred throughout her entire life. A devout Christian, she ascribed her visions and vivid dreams to premonitions from God.

In or around 1844 she married a free black man named John Tubman. Their union was complicated due to her slave status. The mother's status dictated that of the children so any children born to Harriet and John would be enslaved. Tubman changed her name from Araminta to Harriet soon after her marriage though the exact timing is unclear.

In 1849 Tubman became ill again and her value as a slave diminished as a result. Brodess tried to sell her but couldn't find a buyer. Tubman began to pray that her owner would change his ways and stop trying to sell her. When it appeared as if the sale was being finalised, she changed her prayers, instead praying for God to kill him. Brodess died a week later and Tubman expressed regret for her earlier sentiments. Brodess' widow began selling the family slaves but Tubman refused to wait for the Brodess family to decide her fate. Tubman and her brothers Ben and Henry escaped from slavery on September 17 1849. Tubman was hired out to Dr. Anthony Thompson and it is likely her brothers labored for Thompson too. Two weeks later, Brodess' widow posted a runaway notice offering a reward for the return of her slaves. Tubman's brothers succumbed to second thoughts, fearful of the dangers ahead, and went back, forcing Tubman to return with them. Soon afterwards Tubman escaped again, this time without her brothers. Tubman made use of the extensive network known as the Underground Railroad. This nformal but well-organised system was composed of free and enslaved blacks, white abolitionists and other activists.

In 1850 Tubman received warning that her niece and her niece's two children were going to be sold. Horrified at the prospect of having her family broken up even more, Tubman returned to the land of her enslavement. Tubman's niece and children escaped and Tubman brought the family safely to Philadelphia. The following spring she went back to Maryland to help guide away other family members. This time she brought back her brother Moses and two other unidentified men. As she led more and more individuals out of slavery, she became popularly known as "Moses" - an allusion to the prophet in the Book of Exodus who led the Hebrews to freedom. In the fall of 1851 Tubman returned to Dorchester County to find her husband. While she had been gone, John had married another woman named Caroline and Tubman sent word that he should join her but he said he was happy where he was. Suppressing her anger, Tubman found some slave who wanted to escape and led them to Philadelphia. In December 1851 Tubman guided a group of 11 fugitives northward to Canada. For eleven years Tubman returned to the Eastern Shore of Maryland, rescuing some seventy slaves in 13 expeditions including her 3 other brothers, their wives and some of their children. She also provided specific instructions for about 50 to 60 other fugitives who escaped to the north. Slaveholders in the region never knew that "Minty" was behind the slave escapes. They began to suspect a northern white abolitionist was secretly enticing their slaves away. Despite the best efforts of the slaveholders, Tubman was never captured and neither were the fugitives she guided. One of her last missions into Maryland was to retrieve her aging parents. She travelled to the Eastern Shore and led them north to Canada.

When the American Civil War broke out in 1861, Tubman saw a Union victory as a key step toward the abolition of slavery. Tubman hoped to offer her own expertise and skills to the Union cause and soon she joined a group of abolitionists. Tubman served as a nurse in Port Royal, preparing remedies from local plants and aiding soldiers suffering from dysentery. She rendered assistance to men with smallpox. When Lincoln finally put the Emancipation Proclamation into effect Tubman considered it an important step toward the goal of liberating all black people from slavery. She renewed her support for a defeat of the Confederacy and soon she was leading a band of scouts through the land around Port Royal. She later provided Colonel James Montgomery with key intelligence which aided the capture of Jacksonville, Florida. Later that year Tubman became the first woman to lead an armed assault during the Civil War, a raid which rescued more than seven hundred slaves. For 2 more years Tubman worked for the Union forces scouting into Confederate territory and nursing wounded soldiers in Virginia. Despite her years of service, she had never received a regular salary and was for years denied compensation. She didn't receive a pension for her service until 1899. Her constant humanitarian work for her family and former slaves kept her in a state of constant poverty.

Tubman spent her remaining years in Auburn and married a Civil War veteran called Nelson Davis, who was 22 years younger. They spent the next 20 years together and in 1874 they adopted a baby girl named Gertie.

Tubman worked in her later years to promote the cause of women's suffrage. Tubman travelled to New York, Boston and Washington D.C to speak out in favour of women's voting rights. She was the keynote speaker at the first meeting of the National Federation of Afro-American Women.

At the turn of the century Tubman became heavily involved with the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in Auburn. In 1903 she donated a parcel of real estate to the church under the instruction that it be made into a home for "aged and indigent colored people". It was named the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged and opened on June 23, 1908. By 1911 her body was so frail that she had to be admitted to the rest home. Surrounded by friends and family members, Harriet Tubman died of pneumonia on March 10, 1913. Just before she died, she told those in the room "I go to prepare a place for you".

This information is taken from the Wikipedia page on Harriet Tubman. To read the entire page on her life, click here.

Below is a youtube video of an edited documentary on Harriet Tubman.