Harriet Tubman
#DouglassWeek23 will take place in Rochester, New York, this year, which is fitting since Frederick Douglass called this great city home from 1847-1872. Just about an hour away, in Auburn, New York, lived one of Douglass’ friends, also a well-known abolitionist and activist, Harriet Tubman. Tubman, having secured her freedom and that of her parents, moved to Auburn in 1858, encouraged by her friend and women’s rights activist, Lucretia Mott. Shifting her base of operations to New York, which had declared slavery to be illegal in 1827, Tubman continued to rescue runaway slaves.
Tubman was born into slavery in 1822 and emancipated herself and escaped from her slave owner in Maryland in 1849, traveling by herself to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was there where she met William Still who provided her with crucial resources making her eventual escape to Ottowa, Canada possible in 1850. She was determined to help others escape, making many more trips into slave-owning states. Tubman conducted her last such trip in 1861 just before the Civil War broke out, and she joined the Union Army as a nurse and eventually became an invaluable spy.
Tubman worked with and was respected by many abolitionist and human rights leaders such as Frederick Douglass, Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and John Brown. She directly rescued 70 people from slavery and indirectly rescued hundreds more through her participation in the Underground Railroad and the Civil War.
Despite her well-publicized war efforts, Harriet Tubman only eventually received a nurse’s pension. Unable to pay the taxes on her home, she sold it to the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. The AME Zion church maintained her house and helped her establish the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged where she was cared for in her old age. Tubman was plagued by life-long injuries sustained while she was brutally abused as a slave, and she died in 1913, but her contributions continue to influence our society to this day.
📸 “Harriet Tubman - The Journey to Freedom,” by Wofford Sculpture Studio, LLC