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Looking back at the life and struggles of Harriet Tubman, the famous black anti-slavery activist.
©️Library of Congress
In 2020, in the United States, Harriet Tubman was supposed to be the first black figure to appear on a banknote. But the new 20$ bill featuring Harriet Tubman's face, a black anti-slavery activist, will not be released before 2028, at least, as decided by the current president Donald Trump.
While 2020 is also the year of the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, Harriet Tubman will therefore not replace the face of the seventh American president, populist, Andrew Jackson, admired by Trump. It seems that for the American president, it might be too soon to feature the portrait of a woman on a bill, who is also black and an anti-slavery activist. But, that's another debate.
We take advantage of this current event to revisit the life story of Harriet Tubman and make it one of our Ancestor Stories, as we like them.
It is the early 1820s in the United States, in Dorchester County, Maryland. Araminta Ross has just been born; she is the sixth daughter (out of nine children) of Harriet Green and Ben Ross, both slaves of Mary Pattison Brodess and her second husband Anthony Thompson in Madison.
The family history tells that her grandmother arrived in the country on a slave ship from Africa (perhaps Ghana?), she is the only ancestor for whom it will be possible to trace the journey.
The brothers and sisters of Araminta will be quickly separated as the slave system dictates, forcing the Tubman family to sell some of their children to other owners. It is at the moment when her mother refused to sell one of her sons that the possibility of resisting invaded Araminta.
From the age of 5, the young girl is rented to a woman who subjects her to numerous mistreatments daily, and this until adolescence. It is after suffering these hardships and especially refusing to obey a white man who asked for her help to restrain an escaping slave that Araminta is sent back to the fields. The adolescent, seriously injured, is left without care and develops temporal epilepsy. It is also at this time that she is inspired by the Old Testament and more precisely by the liberation of the Jews out of Egypt by Moses.
Araminta marries around the year 1844, John Tubman, a free man and decides to take the name of her mother Harriet.
Harriet Tubman will try several times to escape to emancipate herself. First in September 1849, fearing to be sold to a new owner and separated from the rest of her family. She decides to leave her husband and go with two of her brothers. Stricken with remorse and very worried, her two brothers will turn back and force Harriet to return with them.
The second time Harriet leaves alone. She will be helped by Quaker sympathizers and their escape network of the Underground Railroad. Historians estimate that she left Maryland and crossed Delaware before arriving in Pennsylvania.
A long, perilous and risky journey during which she must hide to avoid being captured by slave hunters eager for monetary rewards.
Tubman describes her arrival in Pennsylvania:
“When I discovered that I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such glory all around: the sun shone like gold through the trees and over the fields, and I felt as if I was in heaven ”
Harriet Tubman, “Moses” of the anti-slavery movement, will return several times to Maryland to help enclaves escape, risking her freedom. But as the American law becomes harsher in 1850 with the Fugitive Slave Act to punish escapes even more and force all states of the country to cooperate, Tubman decides to take all possible risks to this time try to free her nieces.
A year later, she decides to find her husband who refuses to follow her again, re-married and satisfied with his situation. This trip to Dorchester County will not be in vain since Tubman will take the opportunity to help several slaves escape, including several of her brothers. Her different journeys will take her to Canada, the only safe land in North America.
Harriet Tubman will later declare having allowed about 70 slaves to escape in 13 expeditions.
During the Civil War, Tubman joins a group of abolitionists and serves as a cook and nurse in the camps of Port Royal.
In 1863 and following the Emancipation Proclamation enacted by Lincoln, Tubman becomes the leader of a group of spies and scouts under the orders of the Secretary of War of the United States. She will then become advisor to the organization of raids and assaults led by the Union to free slaves.
After the war, Tubman will never stop fighting for the rights of African Americans as well as women by fighting for the right to vote.
In 1869, the anti-slavery activist will publish her biography Scene in the Life of Harriet Tubman and marry Nelson David. Tubman will die in 1913 in the hospice for aged and sick African Americans that she founded a few years earlier. Military honors will be given to her at her funeral for her involvement in the fight for the liberation of slaves. Since 1990, every March 10th, her accomplishments are honored on Harriet Tubman Day.