HARRIET TUBMAN: ‘Moses’

Born in 1822 as Araminta Ross, Harriet Tubman was an abolitionist, humanitarian, and union spy during the American Civil War. After escaping the binds of slavery into which she was born, she made thirteen dangerous missions to rescue over seventy slaves using a network of antislavery activists and safe houses known as THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD.

In 1849, Harriet Tubman escaped to Philadelphia, then immediately returned to Maryland to rescue her own family.  Slowly and one group at a time, she brought relatives with her out of the state, and eventually guided dozens of other slaves to freedom. Traveling by night and in extreme secrecy, Tubman (or “Moses”, as she was called) “never lost a passenger,” as she later put it at women’s suffrage meetings.  Large rewards were offered for the capture and return of many of the people she helped to escape, but no one ever knew it was Harriet Tubman who was helping them. When the far-reaching United States Fugitive Slave Law was passed in 1850, she helped guide fugitives farther north into Canada, and further extended herself by helping newly freed slaves find work.

Harriet Tubman will forever be remembered for risking her life to provide freedom to other slaves via the Underground Railroad she created.  She died of pneumonia on March 10, 1913, but before her passing she told those in the room, “I go to prepare a place for you.”