Most grade school kids will tell you that Harriet Tubman was an escaped slave and conductor on the Underground Railroad which is a great start–but she was so much more! A nurse, a spy, a military leader, a public speaker, a humanitarian, a wife and mother who did everything in her power to keep her family together…and she did it all with a traumatic brain injury.

She was a hero in every sense of the word.

Araminta Ross was born a slave in (most likely) 1822 in Dorchester County, Maryland. She lived the first 27 years of her life as the property of Edward Brodess and his heirs. She endured a hard life that showed her just how cruel and inhumane people can be…until one day she decided to take her fate into her own hands and escape to freedom. She spent the next decade helping others do exactly what she had done earning her the name “Moses of her people.”

Bucktown Village Store where she had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and received a life-altering injury.

She was brave, bold, smart and strong; she was a woman with a deep faith who felt that God was leading her every move. When the Civil War broke out, she headed into the war zone where she did whatever was necessary to help free more enslaved people.

By Horatia Squyer, National Portrait Gallery

She was the only woman in the Civil War who planned and led an armed expedition with the Union Army and when the war ended, although the US government all but turned their backs with a “Harriet, who?” she continued the work she felt God had called her to do. She lived surrounded by family and friends in Auburn, New York, married, adopted a daughter, spoke for women’s suffrage, touched the lives of many from babies to Queen Victoria, and had a special life mission helping the formerly enslaved through their lives.

When Harriet died in 1913, she left a legacy of service, a model of bravery, and some really kick ass stories for us to share and never forget.

by Robert Savon Pious, via wikicommons

 

Time Travel with the History Chicks

Books!

Little kids, great for reading together:

 

Middle Grade:

It only looks old

Other bios we liked:

And check out all the information that Kate Clifford Larson has compiled on her website about Harriet, it’s really impressive for a biographer to share this much. Harriet Tubman Biography site.

You should read the Bradford biography, but realize that a lot has been changed as historians got involved. You can read it online through Google Books or pick up a copy at your library.

 

Web!

NPS sites along the Underground Railroad in a wide range of US states, and the Harriet Tubman National Historical Park.

There are so many more museums that relate, in some way, to Harriet including the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. and the Harriet Tubman Museum of African American Art, History and Culture in Macon, GA.

 

Film!

Amazon Prime has several documentaries that relate to Harriet, but the one we recommend the highest is the three-part American Experience: The Abolitionists.

There is a feature film called Harriet that is currently being made and should be released in 2019. Here is the IMDB page for it so you can keep an eye out for it’s release.

What role does this guy, Joe Alwyn play?Beckett is seeing him everywhere!

And, perhaps the greatest film version of Harriet Tubman’s story:

Octavia Spencer as Harriet, story told by Crissle West…continued effort to catch the attention of Derek Waters and Friends to have us on Drunk History by The History Chicks.

Memorial statue in New York City (there are a LOT of memorials to her in the US…as there should be!)

 

This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at ThirdLove, visit them at ThirdLove.com/CHICKS