We celebrate the birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln this month, and we also celebrate Black History Month. Carter Woodson founded the Association for the Study of African American Life and History in 1915, and initiated Black History week in February of 1926 to coincide with the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln.
For many years, the second week in February was Black History week and in 1976, as part of the the USA’s Bicentennial, it was expanded and became Black History Month.
Each week during February, I will highlight a notable figure in Black History. This week we feature Harriet Tubman, a black American who escaped from slavery in the South to become a leading abolitionist before the Civil War. She came to be known as the “Moses of her people” by leading hundreds to freedom in the North along the route of the Underground Railroad. Estimates of the number of black people who reached freedom in this way vary greatly, from 40,000 to 100,000.
In 1849, Tubman escaped from a plantation on the eastern shore of Maryland and made her way north. In 1850, she returned to Maryland to guide members of her family north to freedom. She was the Railroad’s most active “conductor,” making frequent trips into the South to bring out escaping slaves. Despite huge rewards offered for her capture, she helped more than 300 slaves to escape. She maintained military discipline among her followers, often forcing the weary or the fainthearted ahead by threatening them with a loaded revolver.
“Click here for one of the only photographs of Harriet Tubman.”:http://search.eb.com/blackhistory/art/otubman001p1.jpg
During the Civil War, Tubman served as a nurse, laundress, and spy with the Federal forces along the coast of South Carolina. After the war, she made her home in Auburn, New York, and, despite numerous honors, spent her last years in poverty. Not until 30 years after the war was she granted a government pension in recognition of her work for the Federal Army.
Harriet Tubman posthumously received many honors, including the naming of the Liberty ship Harriet Tubman, christened in 1944 by Eleanor Roosevelt. On June 14, 1914, a large bronze plaque was placed at the Cayuga County Courthouse, and a civic holiday declared in her honor. Freedom Park, a tribute to the memory of Harriet Tubman, opened in the summer of 1994 at 17 North Street in Auburn. In 1995, Harriet Tubman was honored by the federal government with a commemorative postage stamp bearing her name and likeness.
