Today is National Harriet Tubman Day. Soon her picture will replace that of Andrew Jackson on the twenty-dollar bill.
So why would the government want to honor a Black woman this way? After all, she was born with the name Araminta Ross into slavery somewhere around 1822 and was never taught to read or write (it was illegal to teach a slave to be literate). She grew to realize that slavery was wrong. When looking back on her early life, here’s what she said:
“I grew up like a neglected weed — ignorant of liberty, having no experience of it. Then I was not happy or contented…”
Just think about it. Would you have been happy or contented to be a slave, having someone dictate what your entire life would be, even to the point of selling you or members of your family without warning? Babies were wrested from the arms of their mothers; wives and husbands were separated, never to see each other again. She was born in Maryland, and, as a child, was beaten and abused. Early in life, she was hit with a heavy metal object, meant for another slave, but it hit her instead, causing a head injury that plagued her for the rest of her life.
She changed her last name to Tubman when she married a man with that last name. She escaped from bondage and left her spouse behind. She began a lifelong dedication to activism and freeing slaves from their hellish existence. In 1849, after having escaped to Philadelphia, she returned to Maryland to free her family members, one at a time. She established routes to the north, using stars to navigate her way. It became known as the Underground Railroad, and she became known as “Moses.”
I cannot imagine what life like a slave must have been like. I do, however, remember reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin when I was in the fifth grade. I cried so much when reading Harriet Beecher Stowe’s words. I never got over that experience. Then, between the tenth and eleventh grade, I participated in a reading program with books that focused on the immigrant experience–books such as The Rise and Fall of Silas Lapham, The Octopus, My Antonia–and one of the things we discussed after the end of the program was: How can people treat people the way they did in that book? How can people who have been oppressed by others when they were the underdogs turn around and oppress other people when they get into power?
The perfect example of that was my own ancestors, who were persecuted when they came to Boston with signs all over the city, saying “No Irish Need Apply.” Then when they took over the police and fire departments, they treated anyone who wasn’t Irish was under the thumb of those who were Irish.
It doesn’t make sense to me.
Harriet Tubman put her life on the line to rescue human beings from beatings, enslavement, family separations–even though she couldn’t read or write–to save them from inhumane treatment. Late in her life, she also worked to help women get the vote through suffragism. The Harriet Tubman home is in northern New York (Auburn). I need to visit that place again.
Harriet always wanted to learn to read and write. She never accomplished that. But people have written songs about her. Here are a couple of lines from my favorite, written by Walter Robinson:
Come on up–I’ve got a lifeline, Come on up to this train of mine…They said her name was Harriet Tubman, and she drove for the Underground Railroad…
Check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnF0PDefPFI
Hi, Wanda,
As an African American woman who was born in the South, I can write a book or two about how we have been treated in the USA, but I won’t do that because I want to move forward in my life. I can’t change the past but I can help change the future.
Yes, Harriet Tubman was a great woman, and I am glad to see that she will be the new face on the twenty-dollar bill, but Sojourner Truth was also a great woman and was, to my knowledge, the first black woman to speak at a wpmen’s right convention in the state of Ohio where she had to enter the building through the back door. Her speech was for the emancipation of women and their right to vote.
Black History in the USA has been hidden and/or not discussed far too long in the USA. When I think of how Plasma was discovered by Dr. Charles R Drew, or the many uses for peanuts by George Washington Carver, who was not allowed to sit in the college he attended but had to sit outside in the cold so that he could he the lectures, or many of the great Black Americans who were beaten chased or killed, I am often amazed to hear people say we did not know that.
Thank you for your courage to speak out and your willingness to find out the truth. You are among the very few, and I am happy to know you.
Shalom shalom
Yes, you’re so right, Pat. And how medicine “stole” Henrietta Lacks’s cells to study them without giving her credit. They’re called He-La cells for research. Sojourner Truth was famous for her “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech.
My love for baseball also brought me to the Negro Leagues Museum in Kansas City, Missouri, where I learned about all the incredible players who were denied the chance to play in the big leagues. Jackie Robinson was selected to break the color barrier because the commissioner of baseball thought he would be the only one who would be able to take the abuse he would face (as in death threats, name calling, etc.) in order to be the first. Josh Gibson was a better player than Jackie (how could that even be?), but he died of a blood clot before he could make it in the big leagues. Hank Aaron and Willie Mays were also standouts, but they too had to wait their turn. Larry Doby went to Cleveland very soon after Jackie did. (You’d think I knew him, calling him Jackie and all…) So many fine men, denied, because of the color of their skin.
I went to the NLBM a few weeks ago. My heart still hurts for those men.
Hi Wanda!
As usual you always have a history lesson. I didn’t learn much about the more famous Africans who fought for our emancipation, but I knew of them. I saw movies on the mistreatment of slaves and it broke my heart. I read books about it. One in particular was by Donald Goines a Black writer. Who painted a vivid picture of a slave running for his life with dogs and white men with whips chasing after him. I felt like it was me in there and I ended up tossing the book and crying hysterically when it got to the part where the everything went black. That’s when you knew the slave had been captured. Donald’s writings took you right there and it was too much for me. I was so heartbroken over what happened to that slave. But I admired Donald Goins for his writing style. A movie could have been made from it.
Wanda thank you for being the passionate person you are. People like you is what gave black people a lifeline to have a second chance at a real meaningful existence.
Thank you for your compassion.
Thank you, Shirley. When I had just learned to read, I saw a sign over a water fountain in Tennessee: “Coloreds only.” I asked my father what that meant, and when he told me, I said, “That’s not fair!” He told me that that was the way it was in the south, so I’d better get used to it. I never did get used to it, nor will I ever get used to any form of discrimination. It’s still NOT FAIR!
Wow, Wanda, what a wonderful insight to such a brave black woman.There are many examples of those who fought and still fight for the freedom of others. Thank you for this amazing insight to the activities of Harriet Tubman. I now want to know more about her.
Thank you, Joy. She was quite amazing. I wonder if all the Andrew Jackson fans will miss him on the $20 U.S. bill when she replaces him!
Wanda, thanks for the history lesson. It is a shame that some of those prejudices still exist today.
Indeed it is, John. As someone wrote earlier in these exchanges, quoting Sly and the Family Stone, “I am everyday people–we gotta live together!”
Hi, Wanda!
If you haven’t seen the movie Harriet yet, it’s a wonderful biopic of Harriet Tubman. Thanks for sharing this! I’m with you and with all the comments about the horrific unfairness of racism of any kind, and of the oppressed who, when they gain power, turn around and oppress others. It’s so wrong. Thanks for being an outspoken force against those wrongs.
Blessings,
Patty