Who was Harriet Tubman?
Born around 1820, Harriet Tubman was a slave turned activist and conductor on the Underground Railroad. She led over 300 slaves from bondage in the South to freedom in the North. She spent approximately 10 years helping slaves escape their masters, and it’s estimated that she made a total of 19 trips. Harriet Tubman was born into slavery in Maryland. She became a house servant when she was about five or six years old. At about 12 or 13, she began to work in her slave master’s fields. Even at a young age, Tubman suffered at the hands of her slave masters, often enduring beatings. Harriet Tubman displayed a desire to help others early on. While she was still a teen, she tried to protect a fellow slave from an overseer by standing in a doorway to block the overseer from getting to the other slave. The overseer picked up a 2-pound (907.18-gram) weight and threw it at the other slave, missing and hitting Tubman on the head. This blow was severe enough that she went on to suffer spells of de
Born a slave in Maryland, Harriet Tubman knew first-hand what it meant to be someone’s property; she was whipped by owners and almost killed by an overseer. It was from other field hands that she first heard about the Underground Railroad which she travelled by herself north to Philadelphia. Throughout her long life (she died at the age of ninety-two) and long after the Civil War brought an end to slavery, this amazing woman was proof of what just one person can do.
New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 2002. LC Call Number: E444.T82 M375 2002 [Catalog Record] Schraff, Anne E. Harriet Tubman: Moses of the Underground Railroad. Berkeley Heights, N.J.: Enslow Pub, 2001. LC Call Number: E444.T82 S36 2001 [Catalog Record] Weatherford, Carole Boston. Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom. New York: Hyperion Books for Children, 2006. LC Call Number: E444.
