Harriet Tubman was enslaved from the day she was born on a plantation in an area called Peter's Neck on the eastern shore of Maryland. One of her first memories was seeing her sisters taken away on a chain gang and lost forever. She never closed her eyes, she said, without imagining that she saw the horsemen coming and heard the screams of families being broken apart. Every time I saw a white man, I was afraid of being carried away. Born in 1822, Harriet Tubman's parents, Ben and Rick Ross, named her Araminta, or Minty for short.
She would be enslaved for the next 27 years. Her parents were forced to live apart after Minty was born, because they were enslaved by different masters. Minty Ross spent her childhood around Bucktown, enslaved by a farmer named Edward Brodess.
He often hired out his enslaved people to other farmers for extra cash. For Minty, this began when she was just six years old. Her temporary master took her away from her mother, neglected her, beat her till they broke her ribs, and whipped her without mercy. Years later, you could still see scars where the wicks had cut her flesh.
I used to sleep on the floor in front of the fireplace, and there I'd lie and cry and cry. Minty was strong and iron-willed. One day at the Bucktown store, an overseer ordered her to stop an enslaved young man from escaping. She refused.
The Overseer threw an iron weight. It accidentally hit her instead. That weight struck me in the head and broke my skull.
They carried me to the house all bleeding and faint. But I went to work again, and I wept, with the blood and sweat rolling down my face. It nearly killed her.
For the rest of her life she suffered not only from painful headaches, but epileptic seizures. The epilepsy created auras, visions, and voices in her head. Her deep faith explained them.
These were messages from God. Suddenly, I heard such music as filled all the air. Her first act of defiance had changed her physically, mentally, and spiritually.
Forever. In 1844, the 22-year-old Minty married John Tubman. She took his name and began calling herself Harriet to honor her mother.
John was free, like half the African Americans in Dorchester County at the time. But his freedom could not be shared by his wife. She was still enslaved.
And she knew any children they had would also... Belonged to her master. She did all the work of a man, she said. She drove news and cut and hauled wood in the forest.
He was a hard worker and earned money on the side while the Brodess family grew deeper in debt. He was bringing people to look at me and trying to sell me. We heard that some of us was going with the chain gang down to the cotton and rice fields and they said I was going. But Harriet Tubman refused to be sold.
One night in the fall of 1849, she stole away from a plantation at Poplar Neck in Caroline County. She raced to freedom by herself. Sometimes on foot, and sometimes with the help of a loose network of trustworthy, enslaved and free blacks, and white helpers who hid her and sheltered her, as she made her way from station to station on the Underground Railroad.
Finally, she crossed the border to Pennsylvania, where slavery was illegal. She was free. When I found I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person.
There was such a glory over everything. The sun came like gold through the trees and over the fields. And I felt like I was in heaven.
But could she stay free? Bounty hunters scoured the north, hunting runaway slaves. At any moment, she could be captured, dragged back to the Brodesses, or even killed.
I was a stranger in a strange land. My home, after all, was down in Maryland. Because my mother, my father, my brothers and sisters and friends were there. But I was free.
And they should be free. She could run to Canada and be safe. But she would not.
Not yet. Over the next 11 years, Harriet Tubman risked her life again and again, returning to the eastern shore 13 times to free her beloved family and friends. She carried a pistol and demanded complete commitment to escape. Often, there were slave catchers and bloodhounds in hot pursuit. Tubman led runaways through miles of marshes and forests and ran for hours on end, hiding in the root cellars, barns and houses of people who hated Sarah.
She disguised herself as an elderly woman or as a man, hidden in plain sight, fear and desperation were constant companions. Tubman directly rescued about 70 people and gave detailed instructions to many more, leading them to freedom. God was always near. He gave me my strength, and he set the North Star in the heavens.
He meant for me to be free. By the late 1850s, reports of her deeds began circulating. The Moses of her people, they called her.
Short and plainly dressed, Tubman described her life in slavery and her dangerous rescue missions during lectures in the North. Her stories shocked and deeply moved her audiences. I had reasoned this out in my mind.
There was one or two things I had a right to. Liberty or death? If I could not have one, I would have the other, for no man should take me alive. Harry Tubman is becoming a legend. The Civil War was fought over slavery.
Harriet Tubman would continue her battle for freedom by joining the United States Army in South Carolina. Then we saw the light, and that was the guns. And then we heard the thunder, and that was the big things.
And then we heard the rain fall, and that was the drops of blood falling. She cared for the sick, buried the dead, and fed the living. She witnessed war in all its horror. But the nurse was also a Union scout and spy. She led a network of eight spies crossing enemy lines to uncover information on rebel troop movements.
She became the first woman to lead a Civil War expedition, a raid that freed some 750 enslaved people. Proudly, she carried a rifle. Harriet Tubman was a soldier for freedom.
In her later years, Tubman struggled to make ends meet. She had a small farm in Auburn, New York, raising crops and chickens, selling eggs, making bricks. Any money she had, she tended to give away. John Tubman died in Maryland. She married Nelson Davis, a young veteran, and they adopted a little girl named Gertie.
She remained a passionate activist. For decades, she spoke at women's suffrage meetings. In November 1896, Susan B. Anthony led Tubman to the podium at a women's rights convention in Rochester, New York.
Mrs. Harriet Tubman Davis. She was introduced to thunderous applause. I was a conductor for the Underground Railroad for eight years. And I can say what most conductors can't say.
I never ran my train off the track. And I never lost a passenger. Tell the women to stand together, for God will never forsake us.
She died in 1913, over 90 years old. Her struggle for equality, freedom, and justice continues. Myths and exaggerations were already growing about Harriet Tubman. At the same time, some of her deeds were forgotten. But the truth is enough.
It was here on the eastern shore where Harriet Tubman came from, where her legend began. Today you can walk in her footsteps. The Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Byway retraces the courageous exploits of this small, unassuming, and brilliant woman. A woman who survived enslavement, freed herself, then became an underground railroad leader, abolitionist, wartime nurse, spy, soldier, farmer, a businesswoman, and fighter for women's rights. This is where she lived, where she suffered.
And where she accomplished great things. We can still travel through history with Harriet Tubman. Moving always toward freedom. Woke up this morning with my mind stayed on freedom.
Woke up this morning with my mind stayed on freedom. Woke up this morning with my mind stayed on freedom. Hallelujah, Woke up this morning with my mind stayed on freedom. Woke up this morning with my mind stayed on freedom. Woke up this morning with my mind stayed on freedom.
Hallelujah,