HARRIET TUBMAN

Conductor on the Underground Railroad

Araminta Ross was born a slave around 1820, on a Maryland plantation owned by Edward Brodas. "Minty," as she was called, was taught Bible stories, gospel songs, and spirituals by her deeply religious parents. But in the tense years just before the Civil War, slaves were not allowed to gather in groups, not even for Sunday worship.

The Brodas plantation was falling on hard times. Sometimes Edward Brodas "hired out" his slaves to make ends meet—including little Minty. But she got sent back home each time, characterized as "stubborn" or "stupid." Deciding that Minty was hopeless at house work, Brodas put her to work in the fields, which was much harder—but also much more to her liking. By age eleven, she had shed the pet name of Minty; folks called her Harriet, now, after her mother.

In 1844, at the age of twenty-four, Harriet married a free Negro named John Tubman. When she talked to her husband about running away, he said he would tell her master if she tried it! But Harriet couldn’t give up the hope of freedom. She had heard about an "underground railroad" that took slaves to freedom in the northern states. In 1849, she knew the time had come. She traveled only at night, using all the woodlore she knew to make her way north. At each friendly "station," she was told where to go next.

When she arrived in Pennsylvania, the taste of freedom was exhilerating! But instead of sitting back and enjoying freedom for herself, Harriet went back to lead other slaves to freedom—over three hundred during her lifetime. During the Civil War, she was recruited as a "nurse" and a spy for the Union Army. But even though she was greatly respected, she never received any of the army pay due her.

After the war, when slavery was finally abolished, Harriet established a home for the sick, poor, and homeless in Auburn, New York, where she finally died in 1913 at the age of ninety-three.

© 1996 Dave and Neta Jackson, Hero Tales, Vol. I