Harriet Tubman_ Fearless Freedom Fighter who Liberated Hundreds of Slaves _ Biography

Harriet Tubman began her life in the bonds of slavery, but lived her life helping others achieve their freedom. She really helped black people have a sense of self, a sense of freedom, and a sense that you know, slavery was not right. Araminta Harriet Ross was born into slavery around 1820 in Dorchester County, Maryland. As a child, she was loaned out to different plantations. By the time she turned 12, she was working in the fields. When she was a young teen, she suffered a severe injury which would affect her for the rest of her life. A slave owner threw a metal weight at another slave and accidentally hit her in the head. For the rest of her life, she suffered epilepsy, terrible headaches, but she also had these strange visions, which she ascribed to God communicating to her. She took these visions as a symbol of her mission, like Moses, to go and free her people. In 1844, she married John Tubman, who was a free black man, a fairly common occurrence in Maryland. Harriet was determined to escape her life of slavery, and in 1849, she finally did it. She risked her life by making her way from Maryland to Philadelphia. She followed the North Star and used the so-called Underground Railroad to make it to freedom. The Underground Railroad was an organized group of free blacks, whites, and Christian abolitionists who helped slaves escape to the North. Harriet had made it to the Promised Land. No one would have blamed her if she never returned to the South, but she desperately wanted to free her family. She made perilous trips back to free her two brothers, her sister, and her sister's two children. When she made a third trip to get her husband, she found he had taken another wife. Instead of returning with her husband, she saved more slaves. Not only did she escape slavery and achieve freedom for herself, but she went back down into the South to bring freedom to dozens of other slaves. Harriet was clever as she was brave, figuring out countless tricks to bring many slaves to freedom over the next several years. The fact that she developed these paths and trails that took people through the country and they traveled at night and they used quilts to have secret codes and know the paths and then to bring people north across the Mason-Dixon line into Ohio to find freedom. So she was a pioneer and I think a very, very strong woman. Her legendary status as an Underground Railroad Conductor earned her the nickname, Moses. Well, I think Harriet Tubman's name, Moses, you know, comes from Moses from the Bible leading people to freedom and it's a very, very proper name, I think, for her and one that she definitely lived up to. In 1850, things became more dangerous for Harriet when the Fugitive Slave Act was passed. Instead of being a free woman, she was now a fugitive. She continued to free slaves, but now guiding them to Canada so they could truly be free. From 1851 to 1857, Harriet lived mostly north of the border in St. Catharines, Canada. She continued to make trips to Maryland twice a year to save more slaves. Besides her work as a liberator of slaves, Harriet spoke in support of anti-slavery and women's rights. Her efforts made her a wanted woman with a bounty on her head, but she was never turned in. She aided abolitionist John Brown with his plans for the raid on Harpers Ferry. During the Civil War, the government asked her to help the Union cause by organizing a network of spies among black men in the South. Not only was she known as the great liberator, but she also assisted the Union Army going down on patrols and advising Union officers on how best to attack the South. Out in the trenches, she also helped Colonel James Montgomery disrupt Southern supply lines which resulted in the freedom of hundreds of slaves. After the war, Harriet dedicated herself to establishing schools for freed men in South Carolina. Even though she couldn't read or write, she understood the value of education. In her later years, Tubman worked with her friend Susan B. Anthony to support the cause of women's suffrage. Harriet Tubman is relevant today, not only for her work in terms of racial justice, but also in terms of women's rights. After the Civil War, she became an outspoken supporter for the suffrage movement to get women the right to vote. To help make ends meet and continue to help the causes she believed in, she worked on a book called, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman. In 1908, she established a home for older poor African Americans in Auburn, New York, which she moved into in 1911. She lived there till her death in 1913 from pneumonia. She was buried with full military honors. Harriet Tubman has a lot of significance for black people, particularly in the age of Obama, because she kind of started the liberation of black people in the days of slavery and really set the path of civil rights in the United States. Harriet Tubman's bravery and determination allowed her to accomplish incredible things throughout her amazing life. She is someone that you cannot forget. She is someone that really kind of changed our perception of what equality and freedom and liberation and civil rights mean.