Harriet Tubman

Civil Rigths Activist

Harriet Tubman was born to enslaved parents in Dorchester County, Maryland, in 1820 and originally named Araminta Harriet Ross.Tubman was a short woman without characteristic features. With a bandanna on her head and several front teeth missing, she tolerated the harsh existence of a field hand, including brutal beatings. In 1849 she fled slavery, leaving her husband and family behind. She returned to the South at least nineteen times to lead her family and hundreds of other slaves to freedom through the Underground Railroad in 1850. Operating her native intelligence and drawing on her boundless courage, she escaped bounty hunters seeking a reward for her capture. Tubman also served as a spy and nurse during the Civil War. Her services as nurse, and spy were asked by the Union government. For more than three years she nursed the sick and wounded in Florida.  As leader of a corps of local blacks, she made rebel territory, collecting information.  Tubman led the way on his celebrated expedition up the Combahee River in June 1863. For all of her work, Tubman was paid only two hundred dollars over a three-year period and had to support herself by selling pies, gingerbread, and root beer.

After the war, Tubman returned to Auburn, New York, and continued to help blacks forge new lives in freedom. She cared for her parents and other needy relatives, turning her residence into the Home for Indigent and Aged Negroes. Lack of money continued to be a pressing problem, and she financed the home by selling copies of her biography and giving speeches. Her most memorable appearance was at the organizing meeting of the National Association of Colored Women in 1896 in Washington, D.C. Two generations came together to celebrate the strength of black women and to continue their struggle for a life of dignity and respect. Harriet Tubman, the oldest member present, was the embodiment of their strength and their struggle.