Kate Clifford Larson talking:
Harriet Tubman was about 27 years old in 1849, and her enslaver had died and left his family deeply in debt. And in order to pay those debts, they were going to sell Tubman and her family. So she decided she would take her chances by running away and taking her own liberty, which she did do with the help of black and white Underground Railroad operators, and she made her way to Philadelphia.
But when she arrived there, she was nominally free, but freedom was not very—what she expected it to be, because everyone she loved was back in Maryland, and they were enslaved. So she determined then she would go back and rescue them. And for over 10 years, she returned 13 times to bring away all of her family members and people that she loved.
And so, then, when the Civil War started, her mission was to make sure that all people were liberated. And she brought her battle against slavery to the South with the United States Army and became a spy and a scout. And she was a remarkably successful scout and greatly admired by Civil War Union generals and officers and soldiers alike.
– the raid at Combahee Ferry that Harriet Tubman guided, freeing some 700 enslaved people. The famous black feminist organization the Combahee River Collective named itself after this raid.
the incredible thing about Tubman is that she was brilliant. She was a genius. Even though she could not read or write, she was a brilliant strategist. There was some level of courage and lack of fear that she had that just pushed her forward. She had entrée into any Union officer’s ear. She could meet with any of them. She was welcome. They listened to her. They admired her. That was a remarkable moment in time during the Civil War. She even was able to testify in a military trial against a white soldier. And, of course, after the Civil War, the rights of African Americans were greatly diminished. But she lived in this moment of time where she experienced tremendous respect because of who she was, this incredibly capable black woman.
So, it’s just—it’s thrilling to hear them talk about naming the organization after the raid that she conducted. Harriet Tubman had eight male scouts working for her. And it was through their work and her work that she went to the Union Army and said, “We can do this plan”—sail up the Combahee River and blow up bridges and liberate people and get rid of, you know, some of the rebel outposts that were posing problems for the Union Army trying to get into the interior in South Carolina. So, she was an amazing soldier and brilliant.
– Feminista Jones wrote, quote, “If having Harriet Tubman’s face on the $20 bill was going to improve women’s access to said bill, I’d be all for it. But instead, it only promises to distort Tubman’s legacy … [which] is rooted in resisting the foundation of American capitalism.”
And the second comment about not wanting Tubman on the $20 bill is quite remarkable to me. And the explanation for not wanting her on the $20 bill is because this particular person felt that Tubman fought against American capitalism. And, in fact, while Tubman fought against enslavement and slavery, she herself was an entrepreneur. She was a businesswoman. And I think that she would be immensely pleased to be on the $20 bill. And I think of men and women and children around this country—around the world, actually, because the $20 bill is the most used currency around the world—to have them look at this image of a freedom fighter, a woman of color, a woman of courage, of brilliance and genius, who came from nowhere, who came from the most obscure and oppressed circumstances, to rise above, take her freedom and her liberty, bring it to other people and continue to persist and persevere—so, I just don’t understand that feeling that she doesn’t belong on the $20 bill, when she herself was an entrepreneur and a businesswoman and wanted people to have self-determination, to be able to make a way in the world. And I think having her on the $20 bill would go a long way to inspiring people to do that.
Back in 1993, I was working for a small, regional investment bank, and I had my MBA. And I decided that that just was not inspiring me anymore. And I had always had a passion for history. And I decided to go back and get my master’s in women’s history.
At the same time, my daughter was 7 years old and in second grade, and she came home with a little biography of Harriet Tubman. And while I was vaguely aware of Tubman at the time, reading the little children’s book inspired me to look for an adult biography. And the last one that had been published at that time was in the 1940s. And I was stunned. And so were my professors at Simmons. And that set me on a journey to continue my studies and get my Ph.D., and my dissertation was the biography of Harriet Tubman.
And it turned out that there was so much information to be had about her, because she met so many different abolitionists who were overwhelmed by her personality, her presence, her courage, the things that she had done, and they wrote about her. And every single day, she inspired me to keep moving forward with that biography.
And ever since then, I’ve continued to research her life, since my book came out in the early 2000s. And I’ve consulted for the National Park Service. We now have two parks dedicated to Harriet Tubman, one in Maryland and one in Auburn, New York, where she spent the last 50 years in freedom. And there are so many things happening about Tubman now, and I feel so fortunate and grateful to be part of bringing her story to the public.
it’s an interesting comparison. Frederick Douglass was born on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, as well, in 1818, about four years before Tubman was born. He was enslaved like Tubman. He was mistreated like she was. And he had advantages of being able to—spending time in Baltimore. He learned to read and write. And then he took his freedom with the help of his free-born wife, who was also born on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.
Frederick Douglass was an orator and a statesman. He did not do the work that Tubman did going back into basically enemy territory and fighting the battle of slavery on the ground there by rescuing people and bringing them north, frustrating those slaveholders by robbing them, basically, of their property. But Frederick Douglass was on the stage, and Harriet Tubman was, under the cover of nighttime, going back and rescuing people. And, in fact, one time Frederick Douglass wrote about Tubman. He said that while his work was in the limelight, hers was under the midnight stars.
I was surprised at her humor. She had great humor. And people who met her wrote about that. It was a very dry sense of humor. And she also was brilliant. She remembered everything that she heard and saw. She could recite passages from the Bible. She was really a genius. And, unfortunately, genius back in those days was recognized only through letters, people who could write and read letters. But she had this amazing skill to be able to read a landscape, to read the night sky, to read people, to hear and listen and sense danger.
She was also an incredibly spiritual person. She deep and profound faith in God. And she believed that God protected her on all of these missions. And I don’t know if anyone can argue with her about that, because certainly she risked her life every single day, and she was never caught, and she was incredibly successful.
So, those are just some of the things that surprised me. She just—her presence sparked awe in people. She was only five feet tall, but people who met her were overwhelmed by her personality. John Brown, the famous John Brown who struck really the first blow of the Civil War on his attack at Harpers Ferry, when he met Harriet Tubman, he was overwhelmed by her, and he called her General Tubman, which is remarkable at that time period for a white man to call a small, petite black woman a general. So, that just gave me a sense of the strength of her personality and her character.
And she was an incredible leader because people followed her, and sometimes they weren’t even sure why, particularly on the Underground Railroad. But she inspired confidence, and her leadership style was profound and very successful.
– Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth
They did not really know each other. They met each other once. And Tubman mentioned that she regretted—Sojourner Truth had told her that she had met Abraham Lincoln. And Tubman had not met Lincoln. And apparently she had an opportunity, and she did not. And she regretted that, because she determined that he ultimately was a very good man who helped end the Civil War and liberate enslaved people.
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Kate Clifford Larson
author of Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero.
— source democracynow.org | May 30, 2019