Harriet Tubman
Many of the people of faith that have gone before us can inspire us by the words they leave behind in books. We get a feel for their heart, the trials they faced and their unwavering faith in God as we read pages and pages about their journey. Harriet Tubman never wrote books, in fact, she could neither read nor write, she was illiterate. Yet it is her actions during the course of her 90 odd years of life on earth that make her a remarkable woman of faith and courage.
One of nine children, Araminta ‘Minty” Ross was born around 1820 in Maryland in the United States, a state which is a two hour drive from New York City. It was not a normal childhood, rather than go to school, she was born enslaved, something quite hard for us to imagine in 2024. Around the age of six, Minty was separated from both her parents and was made to work as a housemaid. That early separation, understandably, brought an emotional pain and one which she took risks in order to be united with her family again.
She later changed her name to Harriet, her mother’s name. During her years in slavery, Harriet resisted. However, when she finally got her freedom, the thought of her fellow family and others stuck in slavery motivated her to go back and try and release them, often at great personal danger. The idea that if you are saved, you should save others, as we know spiritually, obviously meant a lot to Harriet too.
“If a person would send another into bondage, he would, it appears to me, be bad enough to send him into hell if he could.”
“My home, after all, was down in Maryland, because my father, my mother, my brothers, and sisters, and friends were there. But I was free, and they should be free.”
Harriet’s faith came from being a part of a dynamic church culture that gave her a firm faith in Christ:
“God's time is always near. He set the North Star in the heavens; He gave me the strength in my limbs; He meant I should be free.”
She often had vivid dreams and these were her feelings when she first escaped slavery:
“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 trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven.”
Quotes that we have from Harriet speak of the heart of her prayers for others and of her unquenching faith that God was with her as she made dangerous and long journeys on foot, to free others.
“I said to the Lord, I’m going to hold steady on to you, and I know you will see me through and I prayed to God to make me strong and able to fight, and that's what I've always prayed for ever since."
“Oh, Lord! You’ve been with me in six troubles, don’t desert me in the seventh!”
Harriet was widely known in America, her main legacy is as a conductor of the Underground Railroad. Now before you think of a London tube style railway line - think again!
The Underground Railroad was not located underground nor was it a railroad - it was a loosely organised network of connections with no clear defined routes. They provided safehouses and transportation to aid slaves to freedom. There were code words and people were known as passengers. Harriet was never caught and never lost a “passenger.” It is estimated that she saved around 300 people from slavery making around 19 trips south over a period of 11 years.
“We was the fools, and they was the wise men; but we wasn't fools enough to go down the high road in the broad daylight."
A movie released in 2019, Harriet, is worth watching to give you a fuller flavour of Harriet as an incredibly courageous woman - and of her unique accent. So read these quotes aloud and no, we haven’t made any spelling mistakes -
"From Christmas till March I worked as I could, and I prayed through all the long nights - I groaned and prayed for ole master: 'Oh Lord, convert master!' 'Oh Lord, change dat man's heart!' 'Pears like I prayed all the time.”
“Why, the language down there in the far South is just as different from ours in Maryland as you think. They laughed when they heard me talk and I couldn’t understand them no how.”
She was given an affectionate nickname, Moses, for being ‘the Moses of her people’ bringing them to the Promised ‘free’ land.
In Ann Petry's book, Harriet Tubman, we find a remarkable skill Harriet possessed that showed her intelligence:
“It was as the storyteller, the bard, that Harriet's active years came to a close. She had never learned to read and write. She compensated for this by developing a memory on which was indelibly stamped everything she had ever heard or seen or experienced. She had a highly developed sense of the dramatic, a sense of the comic, and because in her early years she had memorised verses from the Bible, word for word, the surge and sway of the majestic rhythm of the King James version of the Bible was an integral part of her speech. It was these qualities that made her a superb storyteller.”
Harriet died in March 1913 and was buried with military honours at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn, New York. From being full of faith in God, to triumphing over extraordinary difficulties with an immense amount of courage, Harriet is indeed someone that can inspire us in the 21st century to resist hate and love our neighbour, just as Jesus commands us to do.
Article researched with the aid of www.womenshistory.com and the books, Harriet Tubman by Ann Petry and Heroes of the faith by J. John. Most of the direct quotations used by biographers of Harriet Tubman are possible only because of Sarah Hopkins Bradford, a schoolteacher who lived in Auburn who first recorded them.