tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/harriet-tubman-26901/articlesHarriet Tubman – The Conversation2023-02-01T13:19:30Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1985742023-02-01T13:19:30Z2023-02-01T13:19:30ZA Black history primer on African Americans’ fight for equality – 5 essential reads<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/507391/original/file-20230131-14-13dugc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">President Barack Obama presents NBA champion and human rights advocate Bill Russell the Medal of Freedom on Feb. 15, 2011.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-barack-obama-presents-basetball-hall-of-fame-news-photo/109136617?phrase=bill%20Russell&adppopup=true">Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As the father of Black history, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Carter-G-Woodson">Carter G. Woodson</a> had a simple goal – to legitimize the study of African American history and culture.</p>
<p>To that end, in 1912, shortly after becoming the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/cawo/learn/carter-g-woodson-biography.htm">second African American</a> after <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/collection.php?cpk=1011">W.E.B. Du Bois</a> to earn a Ph.D. at Harvard, Woodson founded the <a href="https://asalh.org/">Association for the Study of Negro Life and History</a> in 1915.</p>
<p>More than 100 years later, Woodson’s goal and his work detailing the struggle of Black Americans to obtain full citizenship after centuries of systemic racism is still relevant today. </p>
<p>As dozens of <a href="https://theconversation.com/florida-gov-desantis-leads-the-gops-national-charge-against-public-education-that-includes-lessons-on-race-and-sexual-orientation-196369">GOP-controlled state legislatures</a> across the U.S. have either considered or enacted laws restricting how race is taught in public schools, The Conversation U.S. has published numerous stories over the years exploring the rich terrain of Black history – and the never-ending quest to form what the Founding Fathers called <a href="https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution">a more perfect union</a>.</p>
<h2>1. From the Underground Railroad to Civil War battlefields</h2>
<p>Armed with a deep faith, Harriet Tubman is most famous for her successes along the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/hatu/index.htm">Underground Railroad</a>, the interracial network of abolitionists who enabled Black people to escape from slavery along secret routes in the South to freedom in the North and Canada.</p>
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<img alt="A group of black men and women are posing for a portrait." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458947/original/file-20220420-15105-eot9se.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458947/original/file-20220420-15105-eot9se.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458947/original/file-20220420-15105-eot9se.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458947/original/file-20220420-15105-eot9se.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458947/original/file-20220420-15105-eot9se.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458947/original/file-20220420-15105-eot9se.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458947/original/file-20220420-15105-eot9se.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Harriet Tubman, far left, poses with her family, friends and neighbors near her barn in Auburn, N.Y., in the mid-to-late 1880s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/portrait-of-american-abolitionist-harriet-tubman-as-she-news-photo/514885176?adppopup=true">Bettmann/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>But Tubman’s activities as a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/02/08/harriet-tubman-spy-civil-war-union/">Civil War spy</a> are less well known. </p>
<p>As historian and Tubman biographer <a href="https://www.brandeis.edu/wsrc/scholars/current.html">Kate Clifford Larson</a> wrote, <a href="https://theconversation.com/harriet-tubman-led-military-raids-during-the-civil-war-as-well-as-her-better-known-slave-rescues-179730">Tubman’s devotion</a> to America’s promise of freedom endured, despite suffering decades of enslavement and second-class citizenship.</p>
<p>“I had reasoned this out in my mind,” <a href="https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/harriet/harriet.html">Tubman once said</a>. “There was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death. If I could not have one, I would have the other; for no man should take me alive.”</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/harriet-tubman-led-military-raids-during-the-civil-war-as-well-as-her-better-known-slave-rescues-179730">Harriet Tubman led military raids during the Civil War as well as her better-known slave rescues</a>
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<h2>2. Juneteenth and the myths of emancipation</h2>
<p>As <a href="https://as.tufts.edu/history/people/faculty/kris-manjapra">a scholar</a> of race and colonialism, Kris Manjapra wrote that Emancipation Days – Juneteenth in Texas – are <a href="https://theconversation.com/juneteenth-celebrates-just-one-of-the-united-states-20-emancipation-days-and-the-history-of-how-emancipated-people-were-kept-unfree-needs-to-be-remembered-too-183311">not what many people think</a>. </p>
<p>“Emancipations did not remove all the shackles that prevented Black people from obtaining full citizenship rights,” Manjapra noted. “Nor did emancipations prevent states from enacting their own laws that prohibited Black people from voting or living in white neighborhoods.”</p>
<p>Between the 1780s and 1930s, over 80 emancipations from slavery occurred, from Pennsylvania in 1780 to Sierra Leone in 1936.</p>
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<img alt="With a blue sky in the background, a Black woman stands over a crowd of people, raising her fist in the air." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467240/original/file-20220606-26-nw9stq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/467240/original/file-20220606-26-nw9stq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467240/original/file-20220606-26-nw9stq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467240/original/file-20220606-26-nw9stq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467240/original/file-20220606-26-nw9stq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467240/original/file-20220606-26-nw9stq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/467240/original/file-20220606-26-nw9stq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A Black woman raises her fist in the air during a Juneteenth reenactment celebration in Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 2021.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/prescylia-mae-raises-her-fist-in-the-air-during-a-news-photo/1233550531?adppopup=true">Mark Felix /AFP/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>In fact, there were 20 separate emancipations in the United States alone from 1780 to 1865. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/juneteenth-celebrates-just-one-of-the-united-states-20-emancipation-days-and-the-history-of-how-emancipated-people-were-kept-unfree-needs-to-be-remembered-too-183311">Juneteenth celebrates just one of the United States’ 20 emancipation days – and the history of how emancipated people were kept unfree needs to be remembered, too</a>
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<h2>3. An image of a lynching found in a family photo album</h2>
<p>As director of the Lynching in Texas project, historian <a href="https://www.shsu.edu/academics/history/faculty/jeffrey-l-littlejohn-phd">Jeffrey L. Littlejohn</a>
provided the <a href="https://theconversation.com/one-familys-photo-album-includes-images-of-a-vacation-a-wedding-anniversary-and-the-lynching-of-a-black-man-in-texas-183704">very kind of analysis</a> that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Republican legislators in Texas want to ban from public schools. </p>
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<img alt="Dozens of men wearing hats have their heads down as they look at the site where three black men were burned at the stake." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465119/original/file-20220524-26-dcg4yn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465119/original/file-20220524-26-dcg4yn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465119/original/file-20220524-26-dcg4yn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465119/original/file-20220524-26-dcg4yn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465119/original/file-20220524-26-dcg4yn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465119/original/file-20220524-26-dcg4yn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465119/original/file-20220524-26-dcg4yn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=463&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Scene of the burnings of Johnny Cornish, Mose Jones and Snap Curry in Kirvin, Texas, on May 6, 1922.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://m.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063130335364">Jeff Littlejohn</a></span>
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<p>Among the many documents and relics Littlejohn has received, one package stood out. Inside was a family album of photographs filled with the usual images of memories – a vacation, a wedding anniversary dinner – but also, one of the lynching of a Black man.</p>
<p>During the Jim Crow era, <a href="https://lynchingintexas.org/tours/show/4">lynchings occurred regularly</a> in Texas – with 16 in 1922 alone.</p>
<p>But in 2021, the GOP-controlled state Legislature in Texas <a href="https://capitol.texas.gov/BillLookup/History.aspx?LegSess=871&Bill=SB3">enacted a law</a> prohibiting K-12 educators from teaching that “slavery and racism are anything other than deviations from … the authentic founding principles of the United States, which include liberty and equality.” </p>
<p>In other words, as Littlejohn wrote, “this interpretation holds that slavery, racism and racism’s deadly manifestation, lynching, did not serve as systemic forces that shaped Texas history but were instead aberrations.”</p>
<p>The photo album serves as a direct challenge to that interpretation. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/one-familys-photo-album-includes-images-of-a-vacation-a-wedding-anniversary-and-the-lynching-of-a-black-man-in-texas-183704">One family's photo album includes images of a vacation, a wedding anniversary and the lynching of a Black man in Texas</a>
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<h2>4. Black soldiers fight racism and Nazis during World War II</h2>
<p>In <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/624655/half-american-by-matthew-f-delmont/">his book</a> “Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad,” historian <a href="https://history.dartmouth.edu/people/matthew-f-delmont">Matthew Delmont</a> explored <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-forgotten-story-of-black-soldiers-and-the-red-ball-express-during-world-war-ii-179743">the idea of Black patriotism</a> and how many Black soldiers saw their service as a way to demonstrate the capabilities of their race. </p>
<p>Prompted by the <a href="https://newpittsburghcourier.com/">Pittsburgh Courier</a>, an influential Black newspaper during the 1940s, Delmont wrote that Black Americans rallied behind the Double V campaign during the war – victory over fascism abroad and victory over racism at home.</p>
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<img alt="Black soldiers are seen filling up gasoline tanks for dozens of trucks used to transport military supplies." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/455085/original/file-20220329-13-5bfjqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/455085/original/file-20220329-13-5bfjqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455085/original/file-20220329-13-5bfjqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455085/original/file-20220329-13-5bfjqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455085/original/file-20220329-13-5bfjqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455085/original/file-20220329-13-5bfjqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/455085/original/file-20220329-13-5bfjqa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">In this October 1944 photograph, Black soldiers are filling up gasoline tanks for the Red Ball Express.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/picture-taken-in-france-in-october-1944-showing-a-supply-news-photo/1172719702?adppopup=true">AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>During the war, the Red Ball Express, the Allied forces’ transportation unit that delivered supplies to the front lines, was one example of such exceptional performance.</p>
<p>From August through November 1944, the mostly Black force moved more than 400,000 tons of ammunition, gasoline, medical supplies and rations to battlefronts in France, Belgium and Germany.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-forgotten-story-of-black-soldiers-and-the-red-ball-express-during-world-war-ii-179743">The forgotten story of Black soldiers and the Red Ball Express during World War II</a>
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<h2>5. An NBA champion’s cerebral fight for equal rights</h2>
<p>In his biography of Bill Russell, “King of the Court,” <a href="https://www.memphis.edu/history/faculty/faculty/aram-goudsouzian.php">Aram Goudsouzian</a> wrote that the NBA champion <a href="https://theconversation.com/bill-russells-legacy-of-nba-championships-and-cerebral-fight-for-equal-rights-188032">sought to find worth</a> in basketball amid the racial tumult of the civil rights movement.</p>
<p>He emerged from that crucible by crafting a persona that one teammate called “a kingly arrogance.”</p>
<p>Russell, who died July, 31, 2022, was the NBA’s first Black superstar, its first Black champion and its first Black coach.</p>
<p>As a civil rights activist, Russell questioned the nonviolence philosophy of Martin Luther King Jr. and defended the militant ideas of Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam. He refused to accept segregated accommodations in the Deep South and recalled instances of police brutality during his childhood in Oakland, California.<br>
“It’s a thing you want to scream,” Russell wrote. “I MUST HAVE MY MANHOOD.”</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/bill-russells-legacy-of-nba-championships-and-cerebral-fight-for-equal-rights-188032">Bill Russell's legacy of NBA championships and cerebral fight for equal rights</a>
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<p><em>Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198574/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
America’s complicated history with race can be told through the lives and times of Black Americans, a view that some GOP-controlled state legislatures want to restrict, if not outright ban.Howard Manly, Race + Equity Editor, The Conversation USLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1964312023-01-24T13:23:57Z2023-01-24T13:23:57ZHow some enslaved Black people stayed in Southern slaveholding states – and found freedom<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505473/original/file-20230119-21-os9hya.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=578%2C228%2C2959%2C2185&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Black fugitives fleeing slavery on the Underground Railroad,</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/fugitive-slaves-fleeing-from-maryland-to-delaware-by-way-of-news-photo/815687998?phrase=underground%20railroad%20slavery&adppopup=true">Photo 12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>For generations, the <a href="https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/underground-railroad">Underground Railroad</a> has been the quintessential story of resistance against oppression.</p>
<p>Yet, the story is incomplete. </p>
<p>What is far less known is that the majority of enslaved people who fled Southern slavery before the <a href="https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancipation-proclamation">1863 Emancipation Proclamation</a> never crossed <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Mason-and-Dixon-Line">the Mason-Dixon line</a> to freedom in the Northern states.</p>
<p>Instead, they remained within the slaveholding Southern states.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.dependency.uni-bonn.de/en/about-us/people/faculty/postdoctoral-researchers/viola-mueller">a scholar</a> of slavery, labor and resistance, I have written about the thousands of enslaved Black people who gravitated to the burgeoning cities and towns of the South, where they lived camouflaged among urban Black residents in Baltimore; Charleston, South Carolina; New Orleans; and Richmond, Virginia.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469671062/escape-to-the-city/">my book</a> “Escape to the City: Fugitive Slaves in the Antebellum Urban South,” my research reveals that the resistance of Black people in the antebellum South was much larger and much more active than we have thought. </p>
<h2>A natural part of Southern cities</h2>
<p>Despite their numbers, this parallel story to the Underground Railroad did not leave a mark that is very discernible today. </p>
<p>Unlike fugitives who fled to the North – or to Mexico – those who stayed in the South did not cause political debates that historians can analyze.</p>
<p>And newspaper coverage was so meager that, for the most part, generations of historians have simply overlooked the fact that thousands of runaway slaves went to Southern cities. They overwhelmingly came from nearby plantations and towns.</p>
<p>Intriguingly, it is exactly this gap in the historical record which suggests that urban fugitives prevailed, because it testifies to their virtual invisibility.</p>
<p>My research has found snippets and snapshots of information about them. </p>
<p>Autobiographies, such as the ones by <a href="https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/runaway/menu.html">James Matthews</a> and <a href="https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/teamoh-george-1818-after-1887/">George Teamoh</a>, reveal how they procured work in a new place. </p>
<p>When Matthews went to Charleston, he wrote that he “went down to the stevedore’s stand and waited there with the rest of the hands” until he was recruited for “stowing away cotton in a vessel.” </p>
<p>Likewise, Teamoh wrote that he “found employment during a few days” at the dockyard at the Richmond Basin. </p>
<p>South Carolina slaveholders complained <a href="https://dlas.uncg.edu/petitions/petition/11385404/">in petitions</a> that their runaways were hired in Charleston to load vessels. Jail ledgers give insight into those who were caught.</p>
<p>For contemporary residents, escaped slaves in Southern cities were a normal occurrence, as the routine handling of them suggests. </p>
<p>When the New Orleans Daily Picayune in 1852 reported that runaway slaves “were hustled up by the police last evening,” it concluded that none of the cases “were of sufficient interest to be worth narrating.”</p>
<p>Some refugees from slavery were apprehended, but as I learned during my research, most could live and work unmolested by police, co-workers or neighbors. </p>
<p>They could be the washerwoman or the neighbor’s cleaning girl or the bricklayer in the street – all hidden in plain sight.</p>
<h2>Collective resistance</h2>
<p>When the Black populations in Southern cities grew throughout the antebellum era between 1800 and 1860, individual family members, friends and sympathizers offered support to Black fugitives to help find housing and work. </p>
<p>As a whole, Black society functioned as a community in which fugitives could remain invisible to slaveholders, police and authorities. </p>
<p>Harboring or aiding an enslaved Black fugitive had been a punishable offense long before the <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/fugitive-slave-act">Fugitive Slave Act of 1850</a>, which enabled anyone to capture and return any Black man or woman, often regardless of legal status, to slavery. If caught involved in an enslaved person’s escape, helpers could face as many as seven years in prison.</p>
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<img alt="A poster claims to have a $100 reward for the capture of a runaway slave." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505648/original/file-20230120-24-hycurt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505648/original/file-20230120-24-hycurt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505648/original/file-20230120-24-hycurt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505648/original/file-20230120-24-hycurt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505648/original/file-20230120-24-hycurt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505648/original/file-20230120-24-hycurt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505648/original/file-20230120-24-hycurt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A reward poster for a runaway enslaved person that circulated in Ripley County, Missouri, in March 1860.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/reward-poster-circulated-in-ripley-county-missouri-after-news-photo/517213316?phrase=%20slavery%20%20runaway&adppopup=true">Bettmann/GettyImages</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But shared social and political experiences bound people of African descent together. In contrast to Colonial times, it is well known that during the antebellum era, Black families often counted both free and enslaved members.</p>
<p>This mobilized a broad intraracial solidarity that furnished fugitives with the right environment to carve out new lives outside the reach of their masters and mistresses. My <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469671062/escape-to-the-city/">research</a> shows that men and women took the opportunity to find jobs, tie new friendships and join local churches.</p>
<h2>The need to be invisible</h2>
<p>Very clearly, fugitives in Southern cities could only make it with the help of others. </p>
<p>And while flight to the North by no means meant that safety was guaranteed, success in the South depended more than anywhere else on the silence of everyone involved, as my book shows.</p>
<p>Tens of thousands of men and women in the antebellum years defied slavery by running away, thereby sending an explicit message of their refusal to accept exploitation and oppression. </p>
<p>Yet in Southern cities, there was no one like <a href="https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/06/reading-to-explore-the-resonance-of-douglass-famous-speech/">Frederick Douglass</a>, who used his writing and orating skills to fight for abolition, and no one like <a href="https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/15263">William Still</a>, who compiled records on the 649 people he helped gain freedom. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A group of Black men and women are posing for a portrait." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458947/original/file-20220420-15105-eot9se.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458947/original/file-20220420-15105-eot9se.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458947/original/file-20220420-15105-eot9se.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458947/original/file-20220420-15105-eot9se.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458947/original/file-20220420-15105-eot9se.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458947/original/file-20220420-15105-eot9se.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458947/original/file-20220420-15105-eot9se.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Harriet Tubman, far left, poses with her family, friends and neighbors near her barn in Auburn, N.Y.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/portrait-of-american-abolitionist-harriet-tubman-as-she-news-photo/514885176?adppopup=true">Bettmann/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nor was there a counterpart to <a href="https://theconversation.com/harriet-tubman-led-military-raids-during-the-civil-war-as-well-as-her-better-known-slave-rescues-179730">Harriet Tubman</a>, whose leadership qualities and survival skills earned her the nickname “Moses” because of her work on the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/subjects/undergroundrailroad/what-is-the-underground-railroad.htm">Underground Railroad</a>. Between 1850 and 1860, she successfully rescued nearly 70 friends and family members, all of whom had been enslaved. </p>
<p>For those who remained in slaveholding states, publicity would have been way too risky, in large part because the law was in the hands of the largest slaveholders, who controlled state legislatures.</p>
<p>The strategy of runaways and those who aided them was not to attract attention. </p>
<p>Their lives depended on being invisible.</p>
<h2>What we won’t know</h2>
<p>While it is a story of how people defied all odds to fight against enslavement and built up new lives, the success of their strategies to seamlessly become part of a city comes at a delayed price – for historians. </p>
<p>The heroes in this story have no names. </p>
<p>And in the rare instances that they do, a name is all that’s left. </p>
<p>We will probably never know much about individual children, women and men who escaped slavery in Southern cities.</p>
<p>What we do know now is that this type of flight relied on collective resistance that permeated virtually the entire Black population – and it was done in whispers rather than shouts.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/196431/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Viola Franziska Müller received funding from the Dutch Research Council NWO. </span></em></p>Instead of using the secret routes along the Underground Railroad to find freedom in the North, thousands of enslaved Black people fled to free Black communities in Southern slaveholding states.Viola Franziska Müller, Postdoctoral researcher and lecturer in history, University of BonnLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1797302022-04-28T12:19:54Z2022-04-28T12:19:54ZHarriet Tubman led military raids during the Civil War as well as her better-known slave rescues<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458942/original/file-20220420-34130-tnbejy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C134%2C3594%2C5577&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A portrait of Harriet Tubman in 1878.
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/portrait-of-african-american-abolitionist-harriet-tubman-news-photo/928187262?adppopup=true">Library of Congress/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Harriet Tubman was barely 5 feet tall and didn’t have a dime to her name. </p>
<p>What she did have was a deep faith and powerful passion for justice that was fueled by a network of Black and white abolitionists determined to end slavery in America. </p>
<p>“I had reasoned this out in my mind,” <a href="https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/harriet/harriet.html">Tubman once told</a> an interviewer. “There was one of two things I had a right to, liberty, or death. If I could not have one, I would have the other; for no man should take me alive.”</p>
<p>Though Tubman is most famous for her successes along the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/hatu/index.htm">Underground Railroad</a>, her activities as a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/02/08/harriet-tubman-spy-civil-war-union/">Civil War spy</a> are less well known. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://www.brandeis.edu/wsrc/scholars/current.html">a biographer</a> of Tubman, <a href="http://www.katecliffordlarson.com/">I think</a> this is a shame. Her devotion to America and its promise of freedom endured despite suffering decades of enslavement and second class citizenship. </p>
<p>It is only in <a href="https://www.eenews.net/articles/pols-ride-harriet-tubmans-coattails-in-her-bicentennial-year/">modern times</a> that her life is receiving the renown <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/1842/text?r=1&s=1">it deserves</a>, most notably her likeness appearing on a US$20 bill in 2030. The Harriet Tubman $20 bill will replace the current one featuring a portrait of U.S. President Andrew Jackson. </p>
<p>In another recognition, Tubman was <a href="https://www.army.mil/article/243867/leader_warrior_military_intelligence_operative_harriet_tubman_davis_honored_in_womens_history">accepted in </a>June 2021 to the United States Army Military Intelligence Corps Hall of Fame at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. She is one of 278 members, 17 of whom are women, honored for their special operations leadership and intelligence work. </p>
<p>Though traditional accolades escaped Tubman for most of her life, she did achieve an honor usually reserved for white officers on the Civil War battlefield. </p>
<p>After she led a successful raid of a Confederate outpost in South Carolina that saw 750 Black people rescued from slavery, a white commanding officer fetched a pitcher of water for Tubman as she remained seated at a table. </p>
<h2>A different education</h2>
<p>Believed to have been born in March 1822 in Dorchester County, Maryland, Tubman was named Araminta by her enslaved parents, Rit and Ben Ross.</p>
<p>“Minty” was the fifth of nine Ross children. She was <a href="http://www.harriet-tubman.org/early-life/">frequently separated</a> from her family by her white enslaver, Edward Brodess, who started leasing her to white neighbors when she was just 6 years old. </p>
<p>At their hands, she <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p1535.html">endured physical abuse</a>, harsh labor, poor nutrition and intense loneliness. </p>
<p>As I learned during my research into <a href="https://www.biography.com/news/harriet-tubman-timeline-facts?li_source=LI&li_medium=m2m-rcw-biography">Tubman’s life</a>, her education did not happen in a traditional classroom, but instead was crafted from the dirt. She <a href="https://www.delmarvanow.com/in-depth/news/local/maryland/2019/10/29/harriet-tubman-free-slavery-knowledge-woods-water-and-gun-underground-railroad-maryland/3829341002/">learned to read</a> the natural world – forests and fields, rivers and marshes, the clouds and stars. </p>
<p>She learned to <a href="https://www.audubon.org/news/harriet-tubman-unsung-naturalist-used-owl-calls-signal-underground-railroad">walk silently</a> across fields and through the woods at night with no lights to guide her. She foraged for food and learned a botanist’s and chemist’s knowledge of edible and poisonous plants – and those most useful for ingredients in <a href="https://www.tubmannaturecenter.org/harriet-tubman-and-nature.html">medical treatments</a>. </p>
<p>She could not swim, and that forced her to learn the ways of rivers and streams – their depths, currents and traps.</p>
<p>She studied people, learned their habits, watched their movements – all without being noticed. Most important, she also figured out how to distinguish character. Her survival depended on her ability to remember every detail.</p>
<p>After <a href="https://harriettubmanbyway.org/harriet-tubman/">a brain injury</a> left her with recurring seizures, she was still able to work at jobs often reserved for men. She toiled on the shipping docks and learned the secret communication and transportation networks of Black mariners.</p>
<p>Known as <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674076273">Black Jacks</a>, these men traveled throughout the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic seaboard. With them, she studied the night sky and the placement and movement of the constellations.</p>
<p>She used all those skills to navigate on the water and land. </p>
<p>“… and I prayed to God,” she told one friend, “to make me strong and able to fight, and that’s what I’ve always prayed for ever since.” </p>
<p>Tubman was clear <a href="https://www.nps.gov/hatu/index.htm">on her mission</a>. “I should fight for my liberty,” she told an admirer, “as long as my strength lasted.”</p>
<h2>The Moses of the Underground Railroad</h2>
<p>In the fall of 1849, when she was about to be sold away from her family and free husband John Tubman, she fled Maryland to freedom in Philadelphia.</p>
<p>Between 1850 and 1860, she returned to the Eastern Shore of Maryland about 13 times and successfully rescued nearly 70 friends and family members, all of whom were enslaved. It was an extraordinary feat given the perils of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Fugitive-Slave-Acts">1850 Slave Fugitive Act</a>, which enabled anyone to capture and return any Black man or woman, regardless of legal status, to slavery. </p>
<p>Those leadership qualities and survival skills earned her the nickname “Moses” because of her work on the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/subjects/undergroundrailroad/what-is-the-underground-railroad.htm">Underground Railroad</a>, the interracial network of abolitionists who enabled Black people to escape from slavery in the South to freedom in the North and Canada. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A group of black men and women are posing for a portrait." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458947/original/file-20220420-15105-eot9se.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458947/original/file-20220420-15105-eot9se.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458947/original/file-20220420-15105-eot9se.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458947/original/file-20220420-15105-eot9se.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458947/original/file-20220420-15105-eot9se.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458947/original/file-20220420-15105-eot9se.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458947/original/file-20220420-15105-eot9se.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Harriet Tubman, far left, poses with her family, friends and neighbors near her barn in Auburn, N.Y., in the mid- to late 1880s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/portrait-of-american-abolitionist-harriet-tubman-as-she-news-photo/514885176?adppopup=true">Bettmann/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As a result, she attracted influential abolitionists and politicians who were struck by her courage and resolve – men like <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p1561.html">William Lloyd Garrison</a>, <a href="https://www.battlefields.org/learn/biographies/john-brown">John Brown</a> and <a href="https://www.nps.gov/frdo/learn/historyculture/frederickdouglass.htm">Frederick Douglass</a>. <a href="https://susanb.org/">Susan B. Anthony</a>, one of the world’s leading activists for women’s equal rights, also knew of Tubman, as did abolitionist <a href="https://www.womenofthehall.org/inductee/lucretia-mott/">Lucretia Mott</a> and women’s rights activist <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/amy-kirby-post-biography-4117369">Amy Post</a>. </p>
<p>“I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years,” Tubman once said. “and I can say what most conductors can’t say; I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.”</p>
<h2>Battlefield soldier</h2>
<p>When <a href="https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/Civil_War_Begins.htm">the Civil War</a> started in the spring of 1861, Tubman put aside her fight against slavery to conduct combat as a soldier and spy for the United States Army. She offered her services to a powerful politician. </p>
<p>Known for his campaign to form the <a href="https://exhibits.tufts.edu/spotlight/john-brown-tufts/feature/54th-massachusetts-infantry-regiment">all-Black 54th</a> and <a href="https://thereconstructionera.com/55th-massachusetts-volunteer-infantry/">55th regiments</a>, Massachusetts Gov. <a href="https://www.masshist.org/collection-guides/view/fa0250">John Andrew</a> admired Tubman and thought she would be a great intelligence asset for the Union forces.</p>
<p>He arranged for her to go to Beaufort, South Carolina, to work with Army officers in charge of the recently captured <a href="https://lowcountrygullah.com/hilton-head-harriet-tubman-underground-railroad-mitchelville/">Hilton Head District</a>. </p>
<p>There, she <a href="https://www.nursing.virginia.edu/news/flashback-harriet-tubman-nurse/">provided nursing care</a> to soldiers and hundreds of newly liberated people who crowded Union camps. Tubman’s skill curing soldiers stricken by a variety of diseases became legendary. </p>
<p>[<em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://memberservices.theconversation.com/newsletters/?source=inline-likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>But it was her <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/why-harriet-tubmans-heroic-military-career-now-easier-envision-180975038/">military service of spying</a> and scouting behind Confederate lines that earned her the highest praise.</p>
<p>She recruited eight men and together they skillfully infiltrated enemy territory. Tubman made contact with local enslaved people who secretly shared their knowledge of Confederate movements and plans.</p>
<p>Wary of white Union soldiers, many local African Americans trusted and respected Tubman. </p>
<p>According to <a href="https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth-oai:mc87qp95g">George Garrison</a>, a second lieutenant with the 55th Massachusetts Regiment, Tubman secured “more intelligence from them than anybody else.”</p>
<p>In early June 1863, she became the first woman in U.S. history to <a href="https://www.history.com/news/harriet-tubman-combahee-ferry-raid-civil-war">command an armed military raid</a> when she guided Col. James Montgomery and his 2nd South Carolina Colored Volunteers Regiment along the Combahee River. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="The inside of a room is filled with rubbish and broken furniture." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458956/original/file-20220420-24670-8rd5s5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458956/original/file-20220420-24670-8rd5s5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458956/original/file-20220420-24670-8rd5s5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458956/original/file-20220420-24670-8rd5s5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458956/original/file-20220420-24670-8rd5s5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458956/original/file-20220420-24670-8rd5s5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458956/original/file-20220420-24670-8rd5s5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The ruins of a slave cabin still remain in South Carolina where Harriet Tubman led a raid of Union troops during the Civil War that freed 700 enslaved people.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/the-ruins-of-a-slave-cabin-still-remain-on-a-former-news-photo/1196725463?adppopup=true">Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While there, they <a href="https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/combahee-ferry-raid">routed Confederate outposts</a>, destroyed stores of cotton, food and weapons – and liberated over 750 enslaved people. </p>
<p>The Union victory was widely celebrated. Newspapers from Boston to Wisconsin reported <a href="http://harriettubmanbiography.com/harriet-tubman-s-civil-war.html">on the river assault</a> by Montgomery and his Black regiment, noting Tubman’s important role as the “Black she Moses … who led the raid, and under whose inspiration it was originated and conducted.” </p>
<p>Ten days after the successful attack, radical abolitionist and soldier Francis Jackson Merriam witnessed Maj. Gen. David Hunter, commander of the Hilton Head district, “go and fetch a pitcher of water and stand waiting with it in his hand while a black woman drank, as if he had been one of his own servants.” </p>
<p>In that <a href="https://www.masshist.org/collection-guides/view/fa0236">letter to Gov. Andrew</a>, Merriam added, “that woman was Harriet Tubman.” </p>
<h2>Lifelong struggle</h2>
<p>Despite earning commendations as a valuable scout and soldier, Tubman still faced the racism and sexism of America after the Civil War. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An elderly Black woman holds her hands as she sits in a chair and poses for a portrait." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458948/original/file-20220420-24670-k8479r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/458948/original/file-20220420-24670-k8479r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=781&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458948/original/file-20220420-24670-k8479r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=781&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458948/original/file-20220420-24670-k8479r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=781&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458948/original/file-20220420-24670-k8479r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=982&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458948/original/file-20220420-24670-k8479r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=982&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/458948/original/file-20220420-24670-k8479r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=982&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Harriet Tubman is seen in this 1890 portrait.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/american-abolitionist-leader-and-former-slave-harriet-news-photo/2666879?adppopup=true">MPI/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When she sought payment for her service as a spy, the U.S. Congress <a href="http://www.harriet-tubman.org/compensation-for-civil-war-services/">denied her claim</a>. It paid the eight Black male scouts, but not her. </p>
<p>Unlike the Union officers who knew her, the congressmen did not believe – they could not imagine – that she had <a href="https://history.house.gov/Blog/2021/March/3-30-Tubman/">served her country</a> like the men under her command, because she was a woman.</p>
<p><a href="https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/bradford/bradford.html">Gen. Rufus Saxton</a> wrote that he bore “witness to the value of her services… She was employed in the Hospitals and as a spy [and] made many a raid inside the enemy’s lines displaying remarkable courage, zeal and fidelity.”</p>
<p>Thirty years later, in 1899, Congress <a href="https://www.archives.gov/legislative/resources/education/tubman">awarded her a pension</a> for her service as a Civil War nurse, but not as a soldier spy.</p>
<p>When she died from pneumonia on March 10, 1913, she was believed to have been 91 years old and had been fighting for gender equality and the right to vote as a free Black woman for more than 50 years after her work during the Civil War.</p>
<p>Surrounded by friends and family, the deeply religious Tubman showed <a href="http://www.harriet-tubman.org/death/">one last sign</a> of leadership, telling them: “I go to prepare a place for you.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/179730/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kate Clifford Larson received funding from the National Park Service and the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and Department of Tourism </span></em></p>Harriet Tubman has long been known as a conductor on the Underground Railroad leading enslaved Black people to freedom. Less known is her role as a Union spy during the Civil War.Kate Clifford Larson, Visiting Scholar Women's Studies Research Center, Brandeis UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1539702021-01-25T23:09:04Z2021-01-25T23:09:04ZHarriet Tubman: Biden revives plan to put a Black woman of faith on the $20 bill<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380573/original/file-20210125-19-v9am5g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C65%2C4809%2C3316&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tubman, left, with a few of the former slaves she helped escape. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/harriet-tubman-photographed-with-a-group-of-slaves-whose-news-photo/514885176">Bettmann/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Biden administration <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/25/politics/harriet-tubman-20-biden-trump-obama/index.html">has revived a plan</a> to put Harriet Tubman on the US$20 bill after Donald Trump’s Treasury secretary delayed the move.</p>
<p>That’s encouraging news to the <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/will-harriet-tubman-be-first-woman-20-bill-n357936">millions of people</a> who have <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/harriet-tubman-poll-222298">expressed support</a> for
putting her face on the bill. But many still aren’t familiar with the story of Tubman’s life, which was chronicled in a 2019 film, “<a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/10/31/773403263/in-earnest-contrived-biopic-harriet-tubman-is-an-action-hero">Harriet</a>.” </p>
<p>Harriet Tubman worked as a slave, spy and eventually an abolitionist. What I find most fascinating, as a <a href="https://history.colostate.edu/author/rgudmstd/">historian of American slavery</a>, is how her belief in God helped Tubman remain fearless, even when she came face to face with many challenges.</p>
<h2>Tubman’s early life</h2>
<p>Tubman was born Araminta Ross in 1822 on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. When interviewed later in life, Tubman said she started working as a housemaid when she was 5. She <a href="https://www.docsouth.unc.edu/neh/bradford/menu.html">recalled</a> that she endured whippings, starvation and hard work even before she got to her teenage years.</p>
<p>She labored in Maryland’s tobacco fields, but things started to change when farmers switched their main crop to wheat.</p>
<p>Grain required less labor, so slave owners began to sell their enslaved people to <a href="https://www.npr.org/2015/07/18/423803204/remembering-new-orleans-overlooked-ties-to-slavery">plantation owners</a> in the Deep South.</p>
<p>Two of Tubman’s sisters were sold to a <a href="https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/159294">slave trader</a>. One had to leave her child behind. Tubman, too, lived in fear of being sold.</p>
<p>When she was 22, Tubman married a free black man named John Tubman. For reasons that are unclear, she changed her name, taking her mother’s first name and her husband’s last name. Her marriage did not change her status as an enslaved person.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A portrait of Harriet Tubman is shown in a photo book." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380577/original/file-20210125-19-1r8ldhr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380577/original/file-20210125-19-1r8ldhr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380577/original/file-20210125-19-1r8ldhr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380577/original/file-20210125-19-1r8ldhr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380577/original/file-20210125-19-1r8ldhr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380577/original/file-20210125-19-1r8ldhr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380577/original/file-20210125-19-1r8ldhr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A portrait from 1868 of abolitionist Harriet Tubman.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Sait Serkan Gurbuz</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Five years later, rumors circulated in the slave community that slave traders were once again prowling through the Eastern Shore. Tubman decided to seize her freedom rather than face the terror of being chained with other slaves to be carried away, often referred to as the “<a href="https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/drew/drew.html">chain gang</a>.” </p>
<p>Tubman stole into the woods and, with the help of some members of the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/hatu/index.htm">Underground Railroad</a>, walked the 90 miles to Philadelphia, where slavery was illegal. The Underground Railroad was a loose network of African Americans and whites who helped fugitive slaves escape to a free state or to Canada. Tubman began working with <a href="https://freedomcenter.org/content/william-still">William Still</a>, an African American clerk from Philadelphia, who helped slaves find freedom. </p>
<p>Tubman led about a dozen rescue missions that freed about 60 to 80 people. She normally rescued people in the winter, when the long dark nights provided cover, and she often adopted some type of disguise. Even though she was the only “conductor” on rescue missions, she depended on a few houses connected with the <a href="https://harriettubmanbyway.org/tuckahoe-neck-meeting-house/">Underground Railroad for shelter</a>. She never lost a person escaping with her and won the nickname of Moses for leading so many people to “the promised land,” or freedom. </p>
<p>After the Civil War began, Tubman volunteered to serve as a spy and scout for the Union Army. She ended up in South Carolina, where she helped lead a <a href="https://nmaahc.si.edu/blog/combahee-ferry-raid">military mission</a> up the Combahee River. Located about halfway between Savannah, Georgia, and Charleston, South Carolina, the river was lined with a number of valuable plantations that the Union Army wanted to destroy. </p>
<p>Tubman helped guide three Union steamboats around Confederate mines and then helped about 750 enslaved people escape with the federal troops. </p>
<p>She was the only woman to lead men into combat during the Civil War. After the war, she moved to New York and was active in campaigning for equal rights for women. She died in 1913 at the age of 90.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380575/original/file-20210125-17-z4zeb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Harriet Tubman poses for a picture taking in the 19th century." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380575/original/file-20210125-17-z4zeb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380575/original/file-20210125-17-z4zeb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=825&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380575/original/file-20210125-17-z4zeb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=825&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380575/original/file-20210125-17-z4zeb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=825&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380575/original/file-20210125-17-z4zeb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1037&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380575/original/file-20210125-17-z4zeb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1037&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380575/original/file-20210125-17-z4zeb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1037&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A photo of Harriet Tubman taken 1860-1875.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/TreasuryTubman/ae119e509dc64512891a284053fd90b5/photo?Query=tubman%2020&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=24&currentItemNo=3">Harvey B. Lindsley/Library of Congress via AP</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Tubman’s faith</h2>
<p>Tubman’s Christian faith tied all of these remarkable achievements together. </p>
<p>She grew up during the <a href="http://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Second_Great_Awakening">Second Great Awakening</a>, which was a Protestant religious revival in the United States. Preachers took the gospel of evangelical Christianity from place to place, and church membership flourished. Christians at this time believed that they needed to reform America to usher in Christ’s second coming.</p>
<p>A number of Black female preachers preached the message of revival and sanctification on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. <a href="http://librarycompany.org/women/portraits_religion/lee.htm">Jarena Lee</a> was the first authorized female preacher in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.</p>
<p>It is not clear whether Tubman attended any of Lee’s camp meetings, but she was inspired by the evangelist. She came to understand that women could hold religious authority. </p>
<p>Historian <a href="http://katecliffordlarson.com/harriet-tubman.html">Kate Clifford Larson</a> believes that Tubman drew from a variety of Christian denominations, including the African Methodist Episcopal, Baptist and Catholic beliefs. Like many enslaved people, her belief system fused <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part2/2narr2.html">Christian and African beliefs</a>.</p>
<p>Her belief that there was no separation between the physical and spiritual worlds was a direct result of African religious practices. Tubman literally believed that she moved between a physical existence and a spiritual experience where she sometimes flew over the land.</p>
<p>An enslaved person who trusted Tubman to help him escape simply noted that Tubman had “<a href="https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000337589">de charm</a>,” or God’s protection. Charms or amulets were strongly associated with African religious beliefs. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A runaway slave newspaper offers a reward for the return of Harriet Tubman and her brothers." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380578/original/file-20210125-23-1wjv6l7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/380578/original/file-20210125-23-1wjv6l7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380578/original/file-20210125-23-1wjv6l7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380578/original/file-20210125-23-1wjv6l7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380578/original/file-20210125-23-1wjv6l7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380578/original/file-20210125-23-1wjv6l7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/380578/original/file-20210125-23-1wjv6l7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A runaway slave newspaper offered a reward for the return of Harriet Tubman, who was called ‘Minty’ at the time.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/HarrietTubman/b330a134fdf44b9893f4e34f3631dd6e/photo?Query=harriet%20AND%20tubman&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=131&currentItemNo=34">AP Photo/Patrick Semansky</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>An injury becomes a spiritual gift</h2>
<p>A horrific accident is believed to have brought Tubman closer to God and reinforced her Christian worldview. Sarah Bradford, a 19th-century writer who conducted interviews with Tubman and several of her associates, found the deep role faith played in her life.</p>
<p>When she was a teenager, Tubman happened to be at a dry goods store when an overseer was trying to capture an enslaved person who had left his slave labor camp without permission. The angry man threw a 2-pound weight at the runaway but hit Tubman instead, <a href="http://www.harriettubmanbiography.com/harriet-tubman-biography.html">crushing part of her skull</a>. For two days she lingered between life and death.</p>
<p>The injury almost certainly gave her <a href="https://www.epilepsy.com/learn/types-epilepsy-syndromes/temporal-lobe-epilepsy-aka-tle">temporal lobe epilepsy</a>. As a result, she would have splitting headaches, fall asleep without notice, even during conversations, and have dreamlike trances. </p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>As Bradford documents, Tubman believed that her trances and visions were God’s revelation and evidence of his direct involvement in her life. One <a href="https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/bradford/bradford.html">abolitionist told Bradford</a> that Tubman “talked with God, and he talked with her every day of her life.” </p>
<p>According to Larson, this confidence in providential guidance and protection helped make Tubman fearless. Standing only 5 feet tall, she had an air of authority that demanded respect.</p>
<p>Once Tubman told Bradford that when she was leading two “stout” men to freedom, she believed that “<a href="https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/bradford/bradford.html">God told her to stop</a>” and leave the road. She led the scared and reluctant men through an icy stream – and to freedom. </p>
<p>Harriet Tubman once said that slavery was “<a href="https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/drew/drew.html">the next thing to hell</a>.” She helped many transcend that hell.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of an <a href="https://theconversation.com/faith-made-harriet-tubman-fearless-as-she-rescued-slaves-127592">article originally published</a> on Dec. 3, 2019.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153970/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Gudmestad does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Although millions voted to put her face on the bill in an online poll, many still don’t know the story of her life and the role faith played in it.Robert Gudmestad, Professor and Chair of History Department, Colorado State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1466532020-10-02T13:24:16Z2020-10-02T13:24:16ZIn ‘The Good Lord Bird,’ a new version of John Brown rides in at a crucial moment in US history<p>Was abolitionist <a href="https://www.historynet.com/john-brown">John Brown</a> a psychopath, a sinner or a saint?</p>
<p>The answer depends on whom you ask, and when.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://tvreleasedates.com/the-good-lord-bird-delayed-showtime-announces-new-release-date/">long-awaited premiere</a> of Showtime’s “<a href="https://www.sho.com/the-good-lord-bird">The Good Lord Bird</a>,” based on <a href="https://www.jamesmcbride.com/">James McBride’s</a> <a href="https://www.nationalbook.org/books/the-good-lord-bird/">novel</a> of the same name, comes at a time when evolving popular perceptions of Brown have once again gotten people thinking and talking about him.</p>
<p>Since he cemented his place in history by leading a failed slave revolt at Harpers Ferry, the flinty-eyed militant’s cultural significance has waxed and waned. To <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3097254?seq=1">some</a>, he’s a revolutionary, a freedom fighter and a hero. To <a href="https://www.historynet.com/john-brown">others</a>, he’s an anarchist, a murderer and a terrorist. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.vermonthumanities.org/video-reading-the-rails/">My research</a> tracks how scholars, activists and artists have used Brown and other abolitionists to comment on contemporary racial issues.</p>
<p>With the prominence of the <a href="https://blacklivesmatter.com/">Black Lives Matter</a> movement and the president’s push for “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/17/us/politics/trump-patriotic-education.html">patriotic education</a>,” Brown is perhaps more relevant now than at any other time since the dawn of the Civil War. </p>
<p>So which version appears in “The Good Lord Bird”? And what does it say about Americans’ willingness to confront racial oppression?</p>
<h2>From farmer to zealot</h2>
<p>Born in 1800 in Torrington, Connecticut, John Brown was living a relatively undistinguished life as a farmer, sheep drover and wool merchant until the 1837 murder of abolitionist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Elijah-P-Lovejoy">Elijah Lovejoy</a>. An outraged Brown publicly announced his dedication to the eradication of slavery. Between 1837 and 1850 – the year of the passage of the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/fugitive-slave-acts">Fugitive Slave Act</a> – Brown served as a “conductor” on the <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2944.html">Underground Railroad</a>, first in Springfield, Massachusetts, and then in the Adirondacks, near the Canadian border. </p>
<p>Gifted a farm by wealthy abolitionist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gerrit-Smith">Gerrit Smith</a>, Brown settled in <a href="https://parks.ny.gov/historic-sites/johnbrownfarm/amenities.aspx">North Elba, New York</a>, where he continued helping escaped slaves and assisting the residents of <a href="https://www.adirondack.net/history/timbuctoo/">Timbuctoo</a>, a nearby community of fugitive slaves, with their subsistence farming. </p>
<p>In 1855, Brown took his anti-slavery fight to Kansas, where five of his sons had begun homesteading the previous year. For the Browns, the move to “<a href="https://www.history.com/topics/19th-century/bleeding-kansas">Bleeding Kansas</a>” – a territory riven by violence between pro- and anti-slavery settlers – was an opportunity to live their convictions. In 1856, pro-slavery forces sacked and burned the anti-slavery stronghold of Lawrence, Kansas. Outraged, Brown and his sons captured five settlers from three different pro-slavery families living along Pottawatomie Creek and slaughtered them with broadswords.</p>
<p>These brutal murders thrust Brown onto the national abolitionist stage.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361198/original/file-20201001-15-e6i48h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="John Brown, arms splayed out, triumphantly screams as troops battle behind him." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361198/original/file-20201001-15-e6i48h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361198/original/file-20201001-15-e6i48h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=351&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361198/original/file-20201001-15-e6i48h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=351&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361198/original/file-20201001-15-e6i48h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=351&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361198/original/file-20201001-15-e6i48h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361198/original/file-20201001-15-e6i48h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361198/original/file-20201001-15-e6i48h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=441&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Tragic Prelude,’ a mural painted by John Steuart Curry, depicts John Brown’s role in ‘Bleeding Kansas,’ with the bloodshed, fire and tornado hinting at the coming Civil War.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fb/The_Tragic_Prelude_John_Brown.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For the next two years, Brown led raids in Kansas and went east to raise funds to support his fights. Unbeknownst to all but a few co-conspirators, he was also planning the operation that he believed would deal slavery a death blow. </p>
<p>In October 1859, Brown and 21 followers raided <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/john-browns-day-of-reckoning-139165084/">the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia</a>. </p>
<p>Brown had hoped that both <a href="http://ap.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/failure-compromise/essays/admiration-and-ambivalence-frederick-douglass-and-john-brow">Frederick Douglass</a> and <a href="https://exhibits.tufts.edu/spotlight/john-brown-tufts/about/harriet-tubman">Harriet Tubman</a> would join him, but neither did; perhaps their absences help explain why Brown’s expected uprising of enslaved Virginians never materialized. In addition to dooming the initial raid, the absence of a slave army torpedoed Brown’s grand plan to establish mountain bases from which to stage raids on plantations throughout the South, which he referred to as taking “<a href="http://www.wvculture.org/history/jbexhibit/jbchapter7.html">the war to Africa</a>.” </p>
<p>In the end, Harpers Ferry was a debacle: Ten of his band died that day, five escaped, and the remaining seven – <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/john-brown-hanged">Brown included</a> – were tried, imprisoned and executed. </p>
<h2>The myth of John Brown</h2>
<p>From Pottawatomie to the present, Brown has been something of a <a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095824238">floating signifier</a> – a shape-shifting historical figure molded to fit the political goals of those who invoke his name.</p>
<p>That said, there are certain instances in which opinions coalesce. </p>
<p>In late October 1859, for instance, he was roundly vilified and decried as a violent madman. The outrage was so strong that five of <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/brown-secret-six/">the Secret Six</a> – his most ardent supporters and active financial backers – denied association with Brown and condemned the raid.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361196/original/file-20201001-14-1i4v6d2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="John Brown kisses a Black baby on the way to his execution." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361196/original/file-20201001-14-1i4v6d2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361196/original/file-20201001-14-1i4v6d2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=705&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361196/original/file-20201001-14-1i4v6d2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=705&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361196/original/file-20201001-14-1i4v6d2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=705&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361196/original/file-20201001-14-1i4v6d2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361196/original/file-20201001-14-1i4v6d2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361196/original/file-20201001-14-1i4v6d2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=887&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In his circa 1884 painting ‘The Last Moments of John Brown,’ Thomas Hovenden depicts Brown as a martyr.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/profzucker/49646423671">profzucker/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But by that December, the cultural tide shifted in Brown’s favor. His jailhouse interviews and abolitionist missives, <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538119105/Freedom%27s-Dawn-The-Last-Days-of-John-Brown-in-Virginia">published in papers ranging from The Richmond Dispatch to the New-York Daily Tribune</a>, galvanized admiration for Brown and amplified Northern horror over the evils of slavery. Historian <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/140728/john-brown-abolitionist-by-david-s-reynolds/">David S. Reynolds</a> deems those documents Brown’s most important contribution to the destruction of American chattel slavery. </p>
<p>Praised and defended by <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/transcendentalism/">Transcendentalist</a> writers <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2922276?seq=1">Henry David Thoreau</a> and <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/emerson/">Ralph Waldo Emerson</a>, who declared the freedom fighter would “<a href="https://www.ushistory.org/us/32c.asp">make the gallows glorious like the cross</a>,” Brown was later described as a <a href="http://www.wvculture.org/history/journal_wvh/wvh18-1.html">martyr</a> to the anti-slavery cause. During the Civil War, Union troops sang <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/brown-history-john-browns-body/">a tribute to him</a> as they went into battle. For many, he was the patron saint of abolitionism.</p>
<p>Artists, meanwhile, conjured and deployed versions of Brown in service of their work. In the 1940s, painter <a href="https://americanart.si.edu/artist/jacob-lawrence-2828">Jacob Lawrence</a> created a <a href="https://americanart.si.edu/education/oh-freedom/jacob-lawrence-john-brown">wild-eyed firebrand Brown</a> while <a href="https://www.phillipscollection.org/research/american_art/bios/pippin-bio.htm">Horace Pippin</a> depicted a <a href="https://www.wikiart.org/en/horace-pippin/john-brown-reading-his-bible-1942">contemplative, sedentary Brown</a> to showcase their divergent perspectives on Black history. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A young John Brown, freshly shaven, sits at a table in front of an open Bible." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361206/original/file-20201001-24-1ttjddj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/361206/original/file-20201001-24-1ttjddj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361206/original/file-20201001-24-1ttjddj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361206/original/file-20201001-24-1ttjddj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=484&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361206/original/file-20201001-24-1ttjddj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=608&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361206/original/file-20201001-24-1ttjddj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=608&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/361206/original/file-20201001-24-1ttjddj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=608&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Horace Pippin’s ‘John Brown Reading His Bible’ (1942).</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.wikiart.org/en/horace-pippin/john-brown-reading-his-bible-1942">Wikiart</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, during the <a href="https://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/what.htm">Jim Crow era</a>, most white Americans – even opponents of segregation – either ignored Brown or condemned him as an anarchist and a murderer, perhaps because the delicate politics of the civil rights struggle made him too dangerous to discuss. For followers of <a href="https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/nonviolence">Martin Luther King Jr.’s philosophy</a> of nonviolence, Brown was a figure to be feared, not admired.</p>
<p>In contrast, Black Americans from <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/303226?seq=1">W.E.B. DuBois</a> to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd_McKissick">Floyd McKissick</a> and <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7411333-we-need-allies-who-are-going-to-help-us-achieve">Malcolm X</a>, faced with waves of seemingly endless white hostility, celebrated him for his willingness to fight and die for Black freedom. </p>
<p>The past three decades brought renewed interest in Brown, with no fewer than 15 books on Brown appearing, including children’s books, biographies, critical histories of Harpers Ferry, an assessment of Brown’s jailhouse months and the novels “<a href="https://movies2.nytimes.com/books/98/02/15/daily/cloudsplitter-book-review.html">Cloudsplitter</a>” and “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/books/98/02/15/daily/33127.html">Raising Holy Hell</a>.” </p>
<p>At the same time, right-wing extremists have invoked his legacy. Oklahoma City bomber <a href="https://oklahoman.com/article/700006/ready-for-execution-mcveigh-says-hes-sorry-for-deaths">Timothy McVeigh</a>, for instance, expressed the hope that he would “be remembered as a freedom fighter akin” to Brown.</p>
<p>Yet Brown’s contemporary admirers also include left-wing Second Amendment advocates like the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/22/if-others-have-rifles-well-have-rifles-why-leftist-groups-are-taking-up-arms">John Brown Gun Club</a> and its offshoot, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/22/if-others-have-rifles-well-have-rifles-why-leftist-groups-are-taking-up-arms">Redneck Revolt</a>. These groups gather at events like Charlottesville’s 2017 <a href="https://www.facinghistory.org/sites/default/files/Unite_the_Right_Rally_in_Charlottesville_Timeline.pdf">Unite the Right March</a> to protect liberal counterprotesters. </p>
<h2>John Brown the … clown?</h2>
<p>Which brings us to McBride’s novel, the inspiration for Showtime’s miniseries.</p>
<p>Among the most distinctive features of McBride’s novel is its bizarre humor. Americans have seen a devout John Brown, a vengeful John Brown and an inspirational John Brown. But before “The Good Lord Bird,” Americans had never seen a clownish John Brown. </p>
<p>McBride’s Brown is a tattered, scatterbrained and deeply religious monomaniac. In his ragged clothes, with his toes bursting out of his boots, Brown intones lengthy, discursive prayers and offers obtuse interpretations of Scripture that leave his men befuddled. </p>
<p>We learn all of this from Onion, the narrator, a former slave whom Brown “rescues” from one of the families living on Pottawatomie Creek. At first, all Onion wants is to get back home to his owner – a detail that speaks volumes about the novel’s twisted humor. Eventually, Onion embraces his new role as Brown’s mascot, although he continues to mock Brown’s ridiculously erratic behavior all the way to Harpers Ferry.</p>
<p>Like many <a href="https://www.latimes.com/books/la-xpm-2013-aug-30-la-ca-jc-james-mcbride-20130901-story.html">reviewers</a> – and apparently <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/09/21/the-many-faces-of-ethan-hawke">Ethan Hawke</a>, who plays Brown in the Showtime series – I laughed loud and hard when I read “The Good Lord Bird.” </p>
<p>That said, the laughter was a bit unsettling. How and why would someone make this story funny? </p>
<p>At the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urOO9cedz54">Atlantic Festival</a>, McBride noted that humor could open the way for “hard conversations” about America’s racial history. And Hawke’s hilarious portrayal of Brown, along with his commentary about the joys of playing this character, suggests he shares McBride’s belief that humor is a useful mechanism for fostering discussions about both slavery and contemporary race relations. </p>
<p>While one might reasonably say that the history of American race relations is so horrific that laughter is an inappropriate response, I think Hawke and McBride may be on to something. </p>
<p>One of humor’s key functions is to change people’s way of seeing, to open the possibility for a different understanding of the subject of the joke. </p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>“The Good Lord Bird” gives readers and viewers a mechanism for seeing past the historical Brown’s violence, which is the defining feature of most iterations of him and the basis for most judgments of his character. For all of Brown’s madness, for all of his commitment to ending slavery, his care and affection for Onion show that he is fundamentally kind – an attribute that invests him with an appealing humanity more powerful than any physical blow he strikes.</p>
<p>Given all of the cultural baggage that John Brown has carried since Pottawatomie, giving audiences a means of empathizing with him is no mean feat. </p>
<p>Perhaps it will help Americans move the needle in the ongoing struggle for racial understanding – an outcome that’s as necessary now as it was in 1859.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/146653/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Nash does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The abolitionist’s legacy is often molded to fit various political agendas. Yet the Brown who appears in Showtime’s new miniseries is one we haven’t seen before.William Nash, Professor of American Studies and English and American Literatures, MiddleburyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1345172020-06-08T12:25:34Z2020-06-08T12:25:34Z19 facts about the 19th Amendment on its 100th anniversary<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/337968/original/file-20200527-20219-pzyofi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=185%2C1149%2C7971%2C4165&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Women portraying suffragettes walk with the Pasadena Celebrates 2020 float at the 131st Rose Parade in Pasadena, California, Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2020. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Rose-Parade/9e774400ab8f45be85d0a17bb0df94c8/13/0">AP Photo/Michael Owen Baker</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>One hundred years ago, the 19th Amendment enfranchised millions of women across the United States following a seven-decade campaign. The struggle to expand voting rights to women resonates today as the country continues to debate who should vote and how. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://cattcenter.iastate.edu/directory/karen-m-kedrowski/">scholars</a> <a href="https://cattcenter.iastate.edu/directory/dianne-bystrom/">of</a> <a href="https://cattcenter.iastate.edu/2019/01/14/introduction-from-director-karen-kedrowski/">civic engagement</a> and <a href="https://products.abc-clio.com/abc-cliocorporate/product.aspx?pc=A4580C">women’s suffrage</a>, we have compiled “19 Things to Know” about this landmark amendment. Together they reveal the strength and determination of the suffrage movement as it battled for this fundamental right of citizenship.</p>
<p><strong>1.</strong>
Many early <a href="https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/not-for-ourselves-alone/abolition-suffrage">suffragists were also abolitionists</a>. They include <a href="https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14850.html">Lucretia Mott</a>, <a href="https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/44gqy8bm9780252071737.html">Elizabeth Cady Stanton</a>, <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/20439/20439-h/20439-h.htm">Susan B. Anthony</a>, <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/lucy-stone-9780199778393?cc=us&lang=en&">Lucy Stone</a>, <a href="https://products.abc-clio.com/abc-cliocorporate/product.aspx?pc=B6198C">Sojourner Truth</a>, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00064246.1973.11760855">Frederick Douglass</a> and <a href="https://products.abc-clio.com/abc-cliocorporate/product.aspx?pc=B4127C">Harriet Tubman</a>. </p>
<p><strong>2.</strong>
The first women’s rights convention took place in <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/flexing-feminine-muscles-strategies-and-conflicts.htm">Seneca Falls, New York</a>, on July 19-20, 1848. Of the 11 resolutions demanding equality – in the workplace, family and education, for example – only women’s right to vote drew opposition before it was approved. Although abolitionists had called for women’s voting rights before 1848, suffragists later viewed the convention as launching the U.S. women’s suffrage movement. </p>
<p><strong>3.</strong>
In 1869 the movement <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/comrades-in-conflict.htm">split</a> over disagreements about the <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendment/amendment-xv">15th Amendment</a>, which granted voting rights to African American men but not women.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/national-woman-suffrage-association-3530492">National Woman Suffrage Association</a> lobbied for a federal amendment, while the <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/american-woman-suffrage-association-3530477">American Woman Suffrage Association</a> pursued a state-by-state strategy. Recognizing that a divided movement was hurting their success, the groups merged in 1890 as the <a href="https://www.crusadeforthevote.org/nawsa-united">National American Woman Suffrage Association</a>, or NAWSA. </p>
<p><strong>4.</strong>
Suffrage was a mass movement with diverse voices. They included the <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/national-association-of-colored-women-45392">National Association of Colored Women</a>, the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/womens-history/womans-christian-temperance-union">Woman’s Christian Temperance Union</a>, <a href="https://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=9670&context=annals-of-iowa">farmers’ organizations</a> and the <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/womens-trade-union-league-wtul-3530838">Women’s Trade Union League</a>. Most of these organizations became active in suffrage after the creation of NAWSA. </p>
<p><strong>5.</strong>
Women’s suffrage depended on male supporters, among them state legislators and members of Congress. Only men could vote in state referenda to extend the vote to women. Men did so in <a href="https://nyupress.org/9780814757222/how-the-vote-was-won/">Colorado</a>, <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501705557/women-will-vote/#bookTabs=1">New York</a> and <a href="https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=SU002">Oklahoma</a>. Meanwhile, <a href="https://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/0399.htm">thousands of women</a> opposed suffrage. They thought it would undermine women’s influence in the home and family. </p>
<p><strong>6.</strong>
Several political and social movements during the <a href="http://www.crusadeforthevote.org/progressive-era-reformers">Progressive Era</a>, 1890-1920, prioritized suffrage. Women realized they needed voting rights to reform child labor laws, promote public health, and prohibit alcohol and prostitution. These suffragists framed their roles, as wives and mothers, as political virtues to advance a more moral government. </p>
<p><strong>7.</strong>
Besides the leadership provided by the national women’s suffrage associations, hundreds of local and state organizations engaged thousands of volunteers as well. Some of the earliest state associations were organized in <a href="https://www.kshs.org/kansapedia/women-s-suffrage/14524">Kansas</a> in 1867, <a href="http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/exhibits/suffrage/IAWomenSuffrage.pdf">Iowa</a> in 1870 and <a href="https://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/timeline/suffrage.htm">Washington state</a> in 1871. </p>
<p><strong>8.</strong>
African American women reformers saw suffrage as an important goal. They began forming their own clubs in the 1880s and founded the <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/national-association-of-colored-women-45392">National Association of Colored Women</a> in 1896. Unlike predominantly white suffrage organizations, the NACW called for other reforms to address the economic, educational and social welfare of African American women and children, such as job training programs, fair wages and child care. </p>
<p><strong>9.</strong>
Millions of women enjoyed the right to vote before the 19th Amendment was ratified. Women had full voting rights in 15 states and the Alaska territory, and limited suffrage, including voting in presidential elections, in another 12 states <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/timeline/html/cw08_12159.html">before 1920</a>. Their influence helped build momentum for the 19th Amendment. </p>
<p><strong>10.</strong>
In 1913 <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/alice-paul">Alice Paul</a> organized NAWSA’s first women’s suffrage <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/woman-suffrage-procession1913.htm">parade</a> in Washington, D.C. The police failed to provide the suffragists with adequate protection, and spectators attacked the marchers. Paul formed a rival suffrage organization, the <a href="https://www.loc.gov/collections/women-of-protest/articles-and-essays/historical-overview-of-the-national-womans-party/">National Woman’s Party</a>, in 1916.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339319/original/file-20200602-133919-bi2js0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339319/original/file-20200602-133919-bi2js0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339319/original/file-20200602-133919-bi2js0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339319/original/file-20200602-133919-bi2js0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339319/original/file-20200602-133919-bi2js0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=456&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339319/original/file-20200602-133919-bi2js0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339319/original/file-20200602-133919-bi2js0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339319/original/file-20200602-133919-bi2js0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=573&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Alice Paul, 1920, celebrating the passage of the 19th Amendment.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/alice-paul-1920-celebrating-the-passage-of-the-19th-news-photo/646458988?adppopup=true">Photo12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>11.</strong>
In a speech titled “<a href="https://awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu/2017/03/21/the-crisis-sept-7-1916/">The Crisis</a>” at NAWSA’s 1916 convention, president <a href="https://awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu/directory/carrie-chapman-catt/">Carrie Chapman Catt</a> outlined her “Winning Plan” to focus efforts on a federal amendment while encouraging women to work in their states for the level of suffrage that could be achieved. </p>
<p><strong>12.</strong>
In 1916 <a href="https://upcolorado.com/university-press-of-colorado/item/1790-jeannette-rankin">Jeannette Rankin</a>, a Republican from Montana, became the first woman elected to the U.S. Congress. Lawmakers greeted her with a <a href="https://history.house.gov/People/Listing/R/RANKIN,-Jeannette-(R000055)/">standing ovation</a> when she was introduced in the House of Representatives. A committed suffragist, Rankin voted for the 19th Amendment in 1918. </p>
<p><strong>13.</strong>
In 1917 the National Woman’s Party organized <a href="https://www.si.edu/newsdesk/snapshot/alice-paul-and-suffragists-were-first-picket-white-house">protests</a> outside the White House to pressure President Woodrow Wilson to support women’s suffrage. For several months, suffragists protested in silence six days a week. Wilson initially <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/president-woodrow-wilson-picketed-by-women-suffragists">tolerated</a> the demonstrations but later became embarrassed by them. </p>
<p><strong>14.</strong>
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/11/10/night-of-terror-the-suffragists-who-were-beaten-and-tortured-for-seeking-the-vote/">Thirty-three suffragists</a> picketing outside the White House on Nov. 10, 1917, were arrested and jailed. They were fed maggot-infested food, beaten and tortured. The suffragists protested with a hunger strike and were <a href="https://depts.washington.edu/moves/NWP_project_ch3.shtml">brutally force-fed</a>. They were released after the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/11/10/night-of-terror-the-suffragists-who-were-beaten-and-tortured-for-seeking-the-vote/">Washington, D.C. Court of Appeals</a> declared their arrests unconstitutional. </p>
<p><strong>15.</strong>
The <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/09/15/carly-fiorinas-claim-that-the-gop-is-the-party-of-womens-suffrage/">Republican Party</a> was viewed as more supportive of women’s suffrage than Democrats until 1916, when both parties publicly supported state suffrage.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/People/Women/Part3_TheLastTrench.htm">Congress approved the 19th Amendment</a> in 1919 with bipartisan support: 83% percent of Republicans in the House and 82% in the Senate, and 53% of Democrats in the House and 54% in the Senate. Some Democrats from the South opposed voting rights for African American women.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339586/original/file-20200603-130929-9p4n0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339586/original/file-20200603-130929-9p4n0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/339586/original/file-20200603-130929-9p4n0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=846&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339586/original/file-20200603-130929-9p4n0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=846&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339586/original/file-20200603-130929-9p4n0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=846&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339586/original/file-20200603-130929-9p4n0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1063&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339586/original/file-20200603-130929-9p4n0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1063&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/339586/original/file-20200603-130929-9p4n0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1063&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Carrie Chapman Catt, women’s suffrage leader and advocate for world peace, in the mid 1910s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/mrs-carrie-chapman-catt-womens-suffrage-leader-and-advocate-news-photo/538789089?adppopup=true">PhotoQuest/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p><strong>16.</strong>
Carrie Chapman Catt founded the <a href="https://awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu/2018/02/26/political-parties-and-women-voters-feb-14-1920/">League of Women Voters</a> on Feb. 14, 1920, at the NAWSA convention. <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/tennessee-women-s-history.htm">Tennessee</a> became the final state needed to ratify the 19th Amendment six months later.</p>
<p><strong>17.</strong>
Some 500,000 African American women could vote in states where their male counterparts were enfranchised, according to the <a href="https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial-census/decade.1920.html">1920 U.S. Census</a>. But in the South, African American men and women remained disenfranchised through state-imposed literacy tests, poll taxes and violence. </p>
<p>African American women continued the fight for voting rights. In 1920 <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/mary-mcleod-bethune">Mary McLeod Bethune</a> of Florida led voter registration drives while risking racist attacks. <a href="https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/fannie-lou-hamer">Fannie Lou Hamer</a> of Mississippi organized African American voter registration efforts in the South in the early 1960s. The <a href="https://www.archives.gov/legislative/features/voting-rights-1965">Voting Rights Act</a> of 1965 outlawed discriminatory voting barriers adopted in many Southern states after the Civil War. </p>
<p><strong>18.</strong>
Some 10 million women <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/century-of-votes-for-women/773D75DD40FA858F0412D8F2EE322B5C">voted in 1920</a>, a turnout rate of 36%, compared to 68% for men. Women voter turnout rates have gradually increased and exceeded male turnout rates since 1980, when 61.9% of women voted compared to 61.5% of men. <a href="https://cawp.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/resources/genderdiff.pdf">In 2016</a>, 63.3% of women voted compared to 59.3% of men. </p>
<p><strong>19.</strong>
In January <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/15/us/era-virginia-vote.html">Virginia</a> became the 38th state to ratify the <a href="https://www.equalrightsamendment.org/">Equal Rights Amendment</a>, following Nevada, in 2017; and Illinois, in 2018. The ERA was first introduced to Congress in 1923, approved in 1972 and ratified by 35 out of constitutionally required 38 states by 1974. </p>
<p>The recent resurgence of women’s activism has refocused attention on gender equality issues, including the ERA, <a href="https://www.equalrightsamendment.org/why">which supporters argue is needed</a> to protect women’s rights. Although the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/02/13/805647054/house-votes-to-revive-equal-rights-amendment-removing-ratification-deadline">U.S. House voted</a> in February to remove the original deadline set by Congress and pave the way for its final approval, <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/equal-rights-amendment-explained">no action is expected in the Senate this year</a>.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/134517/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dianne Bystrom is affiliated with the League of Women Voters, a non-partisan, non-profit, political organization. She currently serves as the co-president of the League of Women Voters of Nebraska (2019-2021). </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Karen M. Kedrowski received funding from Humanities Iowa and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She is also a member of the League of Women Voters. </span></em></p>On the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, women’s historic struggles to vote continue to resonate as the country debates who should vote and how.Dianne Bystrom, Former Director of the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics, Iowa State UniversityKaren M. Kedrowski, Director of the Carrie Chapman Catt Center, Iowa State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1284452019-12-19T12:14:24Z2019-12-19T12:14:24ZHow migrants and their supporters are reviving the ethos of the 19th-century underground railroad<p>The story of the 19th-century underground railroad, a network of secret routes and safe houses helping enslaved African-Americans to escape, has received renewed interest over recent months. The railroad was run by activists who referred to themselves as agents, conductors and station masters, and to fugitives as passengers. </p>
<p>In May 2019, the Trump administration stirred <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/23/trump-delays-putting-harriet-tubman-on-20-bill-outrage">controversy</a> by delaying the release of the $20 bill featuring Harriet Tubman, a slave turned underground railroad activist and abolitionist. In November, the film <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/31/movies/harriet-review.html">Harriet</a> was released, depicting the heroic struggle of the railroad’s most famous “conductor”. </p>
<p>But the underground railroad has also gained renewed attention in the context of precarious migration towards Europe and North America. <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/figures-at-a-glance.html">Growing mass displacement</a> caused by conflict, persecution, poverty or environmental destruction has coincided with tightening visa regimes and enhanced border controls. In response, forms of support and sanctuary for those on the move have spread.</p>
<p>In North America, such <a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/mar/8/sanctuary-cities-are-new-unsaerground-railroad/">sanctuary and solidarity movements</a> have grown since the 2016 election of Donald Trump. These movements uphold the underground railroad’s tradition and ethos by promising to support and hide those threatened by deportation. Some even facilitate migrant movements across borders, at times along the trails of <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/13/the-underground-railroad-for-refugees">the original underground railroad</a>.</p>
<p>In Europe, comparisons to the underground railroad have also appeared, particularly since 2015 when over a million people crossed the EU’s external borders. This prompted some to talk of the <a href="https://crimethinc.com/2017/02/13/the-syrian-underground-railroad-migrant-solidarity-organizing-in-the-modern-landscape">Syrian underground railroad</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/05/world/europe/france-italy-migrants-smuggling.html">French railroad “conductors”</a>, or a transnational railroad <a href="http://spheres-journal.org/disobedient-sensing-and-border-struggles-at-the-maritime-frontier-of-europe/">across the Mediterranean</a>.</p>
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<h2>Spirit of the railroad lives on</h2>
<p>In a recent journal <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0002764219883006">article</a>, I explored these associations between past and present forms of fugitive escape and acts of solidarity. The 19th-century underground railroad was, according to the historian <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/gateway-to-freedom/">Eric Foner</a>, “an interlocking series of local networks”, composed of “a small, overburdened group of dedicated activists”. Much of the activism of these so-called vigilance committees was not underground at all, but, in fact, very visible – fund-raising, mobilising the public, offering legal aid and confronting slavecatchers.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/before-sanctuary-cities-heres-how-black-americans-protected-fugitive-slaves-72048">Before sanctuary cities, here's how black Americans protected fugitive slaves</a>
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<p>This history of solidarity with those on the move was re-activated over a century later through the sanctuary movement in the US of the 1980s. A <a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/05/04/no-more-deaths-scott-warren-migrants-border-arizona/">network of nuns, priests and their parishioners</a> smuggled people from Central America, many of whom were fleeing US-supported death squads, into the US. </p>
<p>Today, the spirit of this activism lives on in countless ways, ranging from direct interventions along deadly borders, such as the the <a href="https://alarmphone.org/en/">Mediterranean Sea</a>, the <a href="https://nomoredeaths.org/en/">Sonoran</a> desert along the US border and <a href="https://alarmephonesahara.info/en/">Saharan</a> desert in Africa, to providing <a href="https://w2eu.info/">guidance</a> to those still trying to move. It also lives on in <a href="http://www.irr.org.uk/resources/bhc/series/01-04-04-01-08-01/">anti-deportation</a> and <a href="https://detention.org.uk/">anti-detention</a> campaigns, and in networks creating <a href="https://read.dukeupress.edu/radical-history-review/issue/2019/135?fbclid=IwAR0sfHFlEk8hasaikadDse7sxhdyH9qYdeyjjopk4SsUZkUU9D3qn-HB2DA">sanctuary</a> spaces and cities after arrival.</p>
<h2>Denial of agency</h2>
<p>When drawing these parallels between past and present forms of escape and support for those in flight, I noticed that in many accounts, the initiative of those escaping – both historic slaves and today’s migrants – is downplayed or ignored. </p>
<p>For the most part, slave fugitives in the 19th century could expect support from activists of the underground railroad only after they had moved north and crossed the Mason-Dixon Line, the boundary between slave states in the southern US and free states in the north. Retrieving slaves from the south and guiding them north, as Tubman did, was rare. For much of their journeys, slaves had to rely on their own ingenuity and strength as well as spontaneous acts of solidarity along the way, offered mostly by black people and communities not considered part of the underground railroad. </p>
<p>Similarly, the initiative of those migrating precariously today is often erased. Even in well-meaning <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/anti.12320">humanitarian accounts</a>, migrants are regularly portrayed as mere victims and denied any agency in their own migration projects. The activism and solidarity of people in the global south and diaspora communities is also erased – without their support many migrant journeys and border crossings would be even more dangerous. This means that many aspects of past and present underground railroads remain underground and unacknowledged. </p>
<p>This erasure of slave and migrant agency is also due to arguments developed by those opposed to the escape of “fugitives”. As I show in my study, both in the 19th-century US and in Europe today, those who support people on the move are blamed for causing such “illegal” movements. Back then, the phenomenon of slave runaways was <a href="https://wwnorton.com/books/gateway-to-freedom/">wrongly attributed to “enticement”</a> by northerners. Slave owners accused abolitionists of instilling the idea of flight in their “human property”. </p>
<p>Today, migrant escape is also often attributed to enticement by “northerners”. For example, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and activists working to rescue lives in the Mediterranean Sea are often <a href="https://blamingtherescuers.org/">wrongly constructed as a pull factor</a> that encourages people to make the journey. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ngos-under-attack-for-saving-too-many-lives-in-the-mediterranean-75086">NGOs under attack for saving too many lives in the Mediterranean</a>
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<p>Politicians such as Italy’s Matteo Salvini, leader of the far-right League party and a former deputy prime minister, have <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2018/06/malta-responsible-lifeline-boat-denied-italy-180622154705983.html">derided NGOs</a> for supposedly profiting from “loading this valuable cargo of humans – of human flesh – on board”. The country’s former prime minister, Matteo Renzi, also <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/23/opinion/matteo-renzi-helping-the-migrants-is-everyones-duty.html?_r=2">depicted</a> migrant smugglers as “the slave traders of the 21st century”. Through these accounts, European politicians have sought to justify militarising the Mediterranean Sea and <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/can-europe-make-it/mediterranean-battlefield-migration/">sending tens of thousands of migrants</a> back to Libya, where their <a href="https://theconversation.com/migrants-calling-us-in-distress-from-the-mediterranean-returned-to-libya-by-deadly-refoulement-industry-111219">lives are in danger</a>. </p>
<p>The story of the 19th-century underground railroad and the countless acts of escape and solidarity it symbolises serves as a reminder today that migrants, too, are seeking freedom, acting on their own needs and desires. At the same time, countless acts of solidarity along the way and forms of sanctuary upon arrival show that the ethos of the underground railroad lives on, even at a time when borders and social divisions seem to emerge all around us.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/128445/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maurice Stierl receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust. He is also a member of the network Alarm Phone. </span></em></p>Both in 19th-century America and today, the initiative and choices of those making the journey are often ignored.Maurice Stierl, Leverhulme Research Fellow, University of WarwickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1275922019-12-03T12:59:10Z2019-12-03T12:59:10ZFaith made Harriet Tubman fearless as she rescued slaves<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304121/original/file-20191127-112484-i11rfr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A portrait from 1868 of abolitionist Harriet Tubman.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Harriet-Tubman/57952f1f790245d68ce1f73cc07905d5/5/0">AP Photo/Sait Serkan Gurbuz</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Millions of people <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/will-harriet-tubman-be-first-woman-20-bill-n357936">voted</a> in an online poll in 2015 to have the face of Harriet Tubman on the US$20 bill. But many might not have known the story of her life as chronicled in a recent film, “<a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/10/31/773403263/in-earnest-contrived-biopic-harriet-tubman-is-an-action-hero">Harriet</a>.” </p>
<p>Harriet Tubman worked as a slave, spy and eventually as an abolitionist. What I find most fascinating, as a <a href="https://history.colostate.edu/author/rgudmstd/">historian of American slavery</a>, is how belief in God helped Tubman remain fearless, even when she came face to face with many challenges.</p>
<h2>Tubman’s early life</h2>
<p>Tubman was born Araminta Ross in 1822 on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. When interviewed later in life, Tubman said she started working when she was five as a house maid. She <a href="https://www.docsouth.unc.edu/neh/bradford/menu.html">recalled</a> that she endured whippings, starvation and hard work even before she got to her teenage years.</p>
<p>She labored in Maryland’s tobacco fields, but things started to change when farmers switched their main crop to wheat.</p>
<p>Grain required less labor, so slave owners began to sell their enslaved people to <a href="https://www.npr.org/2015/07/18/423803204/remembering-new-orleans-overlooked-ties-to-slavery">plantation owners</a> in the the Deep South.</p>
<p>Two of Tubman’s sisters were sold to a <a href="https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/159294">slave trader</a>. One had to leave her child behind. Tubman too lived in fear of being sold.</p>
<p>When she was 22, Tubman married a free black man named John Tubman. For reasons that are unclear, she changed her name, taking her mother’s first name and her husband’s last name. Her marriage did not change her status as an enslaved person.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304122/original/file-20191127-112545-170u75e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304122/original/file-20191127-112545-170u75e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304122/original/file-20191127-112545-170u75e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304122/original/file-20191127-112545-170u75e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304122/original/file-20191127-112545-170u75e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304122/original/file-20191127-112545-170u75e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304122/original/file-20191127-112545-170u75e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">This May 12, 2017 photo shows a runaway slave newspaper notice for Harriet Tubman, who was called ‘Minty’ at the time.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Harriet-Tubman/b330a134fdf44b9893f4e34f3631dd6e/24/0">AP Photo/Patrick Semansky</a></span>
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<p>Five years later, rumors circulated in the slave community that slave traders were once again prowling through the Eastern Shore. Tubman decided to seize her freedom rather than face the terror of being chained with other slaves to be carried away, often referred to as the “<a href="https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/drew/drew.html">chain gang</a>.” </p>
<p>Tubman stole into the woods and, with the help of some members of the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/hatu/index.htm">Underground Railroad</a>, walked the 90 miles to Philadelphia where slavery was illegal. The Underground Railroad was a loose network of African Americans and whites who helped fugitive slaves escape to a free state or to Canada. Tubman began working with <a href="https://freedomcenter.org/content/william-still">William Still</a>, an African American clerk from Philadelphia, who helped slaves find freedom. </p>
<p>Tubman led about a dozen rescue missions that freed about 60 to 80 people. She normally rescued people in the winter, when the long dark nights provided cover, and she often adopted some type of disguise. Even though she was the only “conductor” on rescue missions, she depended on a few houses connected with the <a href="https://harriettubmanbyway.org/tuckahoe-neck-meeting-house/">Underground Railroad for shelter</a>. She never lost a person escaping with her and won the nickname of Moses for leading so many people to “the promised land,” or freedom. </p>
<p>After the Civil War began, Tubman volunteered to serve as a spy and scout for the Union Army. She ended up in South Carolina, where she helped lead a <a href="https://nmaahc.si.edu/blog/combahee-ferry-raid">military mission</a> up the Combahee River. Located about halfway between Savannah, Georgia, and Charleston, South Carolina, the river was lined with a number of valuable plantations that the Union Army wanted to destroy. </p>
<p>Tubman helped guide three Union steamboats around Confederate mines and then helped about 750 enslaved people escape with the Federal troops. </p>
<p>She was the only woman to lead men into combat during the Civil War. After the war, she moved to New York and was active in campaigning for equal rights for women. She passed away at the age of 90.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304120/original/file-20191127-112517-16rvo6z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/304120/original/file-20191127-112517-16rvo6z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304120/original/file-20191127-112517-16rvo6z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304120/original/file-20191127-112517-16rvo6z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=407&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304120/original/file-20191127-112517-16rvo6z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304120/original/file-20191127-112517-16rvo6z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/304120/original/file-20191127-112517-16rvo6z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=512&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Slaves led to freedom by Harriet Tubman and others, as depicted in an Underground Railroad sculpture in Battle Creek, Michigan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Associated-Press-Domestic-News-Michigan-United-/4bc70c3d64e5da11af9f0014c2589dfb/142/0">AP Photo/Carlos Osorio</a></span>
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<h2>Tubman’s faith</h2>
<p>Tubman’s Christian faith tied all of these remarkable achievements together. </p>
<p>She grew up during the <a href="http://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Second_Great_Awakening">Second Great Awakening</a>, which was a Protestant religious revival in the United States. Preachers took the gospel of evangelical Christianity from place to place, and church membership flourished. Christians at this time believed that they needed to reform America in order to usher in Christ’s second coming.</p>
<p>A number of black female preachers preached the message of revival and sanctification on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. <a href="http://librarycompany.org/women/portraits_religion/lee.htm">Jarena Lee</a> was the first authorized female preacher in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.</p>
<p>It is not clear if Tubman attended any of Lee’s camp meetings, but she was inspired by the evangelist. She came to understand that women could hold religious authority. </p>
<p>Historian <a href="http://katecliffordlarson.com/harriet-tubman.html">Kate Clifford Larson</a> believes that Tubman drew from a variety of Christian denominations, including the African Methodist Episcopal, Baptist and Catholic beliefs. Like many enslaved people, her belief system fused <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part2/2narr2.html">Christian and African beliefs</a>.</p>
<p>Her belief that there was no separation between the physical and spiritual worlds was a direct result of African religious practices. Tubman literally believed that she moved between a physical existence and a spiritual experience where she sometimes flew over the land.</p>
<p>An enslaved person who trusted Tubman to help him escape simply noted that Tubman had “<a href="https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000337589">de charm</a>,” or God’s protection. Charms or amulets were strongly associated with African religious beliefs. </p>
<h2>An injury becomes a spiritual gift</h2>
<p>A horrific accident is believed to have brought Tubman closer to God and reinforced her Christian worldview. Sarah Bradford, a 19th-century writer who conducted interviews with Tubman and several of her associates, found the deep role faith played in her life.</p>
<p>When she was a teenager, Tubman happened to be at a dry goods store when an overseer was trying to capture an enslaved person who had left his slave labor camp without permission. The angry man threw a two-pound weight at the runaway but hit Tubman instead, <a href="http://www.harriettubmanbiography.com/harriet-tubman-biography.html">crushing part of her skull</a>. For two days she lingered between life and death.</p>
<p>The injury almost certainly gave her <a href="https://www.epilepsy.com/learn/types-epilepsy-syndromes/temporal-lobe-epilepsy-aka-tle">temporal lobe epilepsy</a>. As a result, she would have splitting headaches, fall asleep without notice, even during conversations, and have dreamlike trances. </p>
<p>As Bradford documents, Tubman believed that her trances and visions were God’s revelation and evidence of his direct involvement in her life. One <a href="https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/bradford/bradford.html">abolitionist told Bradford</a> that Tubman “talked with God, and he talked with her every day of her life.” </p>
<p>According to Larson, this confidence in providential guidance and protection helped make Tubman fearless. Standing only five feet tall, she had an air of authority that demanded respect.</p>
<p>Once Tubman told Bradford that when she was leading two “stout” men to freedom, she believed that “<a href="https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/bradford/bradford.html">God told her to stop</a>” and leave the road. She led the scared and reluctant men through an icy stream – and to freedom. </p>
<p>Harriet Tubman once said that slavery was “<a href="https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/drew/drew.html">the next thing to hell</a>.” She helped many transcend that hell.</p>
<p>[ <em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>. ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/127592/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Gudmestad does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Among Tubman’s most daring feats was helping slaves escape. She believed she went into trances and had visions. These, to her, were God’s way of guiding her, which made her quite fearless.Robert Gudmestad, Professor and Chair of History Department, Colorado State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1274932019-11-28T17:05:31Z2019-11-28T17:05:31ZHarriet Tubman film does not deserve the Twitter hate<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303643/original/file-20191126-112493-hnwaih.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=122%2C5%2C1137%2C687&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Why is 'Harriet' receiving a Twitter backlash?</span> </figcaption></figure><p>When <em>Harriet</em>, the biopic about Harriet Tubman, debuted earlier this month, <a href="https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/harriet-movie-review-2019">reviews were mostly favourable</a> and it did better than expected at the <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/awards-box-office-harriet-shines-12m-nationwide-debut-1251887">box office</a>, grossing $12 million its opening weekend. Several news stories have since overshadowed these successes. </p>
<p>Most notably, <em>Harriet</em> screenwriter and producer Gregory Allen Howard (<em>Ali</em>) revealed in <a href="https://www.thefader.com/2019/11/20/julia-roberts-harriet-tubman-movie-george-allen-howard-biopic">an interview</a> that 25 years ago Julia Roberts was almost cast to play Tubman because Hollywood executives didn’t know that Tubman was Black. “That was so long ago. No one will know that,” an exec allegedly said at the time. </p>
<p>I first saw <em>Harriet</em> (Perfect World/Focus) at the Toronto International Film Festival. Even though I had decided to never watch another slavery movie — from <em>Django Unchained</em> to <em>12 Years a Slave</em> to <em>The Birth of a Nation,</em> I have had my fill of them — I still went into this one open-minded in part because the film was made by Black women. It was produced by Debra Martin Chase (<em>The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants</em>) and written and directed by Kasi Lemmons (<em>Eve’s Bayou</em>).</p>
<p>I enjoyed the film. As such, the critiques, some quite harsh, surprised me. Where is the backlash coming from? Is it justified? Does the film misrepresent Harriet Tubman’s legacy? </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303749/original/file-20191126-112517-t7w0dl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303749/original/file-20191126-112517-t7w0dl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303749/original/file-20191126-112517-t7w0dl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303749/original/file-20191126-112517-t7w0dl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303749/original/file-20191126-112517-t7w0dl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303749/original/file-20191126-112517-t7w0dl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303749/original/file-20191126-112517-t7w0dl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Janelle Monáe as Marie Buchanon, a free black woman who helps Harriet Tubman transition into life after slavery.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Focus Features)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Who was Harriet Tubman?</h2>
<p>Harriet Tubman was born Araminta Ross into slavery in Maryland around 1820. In 1844, she married and took the name of a free Black man, John Tubman. After escaping from Maryland in 1849, Tubman initially settled in Philadelphia. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303747/original/file-20191126-112531-f0jir1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303747/original/file-20191126-112531-f0jir1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303747/original/file-20191126-112531-f0jir1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303747/original/file-20191126-112531-f0jir1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303747/original/file-20191126-112531-f0jir1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303747/original/file-20191126-112531-f0jir1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303747/original/file-20191126-112531-f0jir1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303747/original/file-20191126-112531-f0jir1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Harriet Tubman.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Library of Congress</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, with the passage of the <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/fugitive-slave-act-of-1850">Fugitive Slave Act in 1850</a> she was forced to venture north into Canada, settling in St. Catharines, Ont. Between 1859 and 1860, some estimate that Tubman made <a href="https://www.biography.com/activist/harriet-tubman">19 trips from the south to the north</a> following what became known as “The Underground Railroad.” </p>
<p>In 1859, Tubman left Canada for Auburn, N.Y. With the outbreak of the American Civil War, she became <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/04/160421-harriet-tubman-20-dollar-bill-union-spy-history/">a spy and recruiter</a> for the Union Army. After the war, Tubman returned to Auburn where she lived until her death in 1913, when she was believed to be 93. For the most part, the film follows this narrative. </p>
<h2>#NotMyHarriet</h2>
<p><a href="https://nypost.com/2019/11/04/harriet-sees-backlash-despite-box-office-success/">The backlash</a>, which has been primarily from the Black community, first started in 2018 when British-Nigerian actress Cynthia Erivo announced on Twitter that she had been cast to play Tubman. Some felt the choice to cast a non-American, non-descendent of slavery was <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/adeonibada/this-black-british-actor-has-been-cast-to-play-harriet?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=BuzzFeed%20News%20-%20September%2017%202018&utm_content=BuzzFeed%20News%20-%20September%2017%202018%2BCID_fe82209309aec1069135f00748a5330f&utm_source=BuzzFeed%20Newsletters&utm_term=Some%20people%20feel">disrespectful to African Americans</a>, and in an interview with <a href="https://www.essence.com/entertainment/cynthia-erivo-black-british-actress-harriet-tubman-movie/"><em>Essence</em></a>, Erivo shared that someone even asked why Black Britons “take roles that should be reserved for African Americans?” </p>
<p>In 2017, Samuel L. Jackson started this public debate about Black British actors “stealing” roles from African Americans when he <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6r3NDSUZkhM">questioned the casting of British actors</a> Daniel Kaluuya (<em>Get Out</em>) and David Oyelowo (<em>Selma</em>), and accused them of taking work from African Americans.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303642/original/file-20191126-84268-1ox6wdl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303642/original/file-20191126-84268-1ox6wdl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303642/original/file-20191126-84268-1ox6wdl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303642/original/file-20191126-84268-1ox6wdl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303642/original/file-20191126-84268-1ox6wdl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303642/original/file-20191126-84268-1ox6wdl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303642/original/file-20191126-84268-1ox6wdl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Kasi Lemmons (Co-Writer/Director) and Cynthia Erivo (Harriet Tubman) filming ‘Harriet.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Focus Features)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Using the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NotMyHarriet?src=hashtag_click">#NotMyHarriet</a> hashtag, Twitter users have also criticized Lemmons for some of the liberties she took with historical facts. Most notably, the antagonist in <em>Harriet</em>, Bigger Long (Omar J. Dorsey), is a ruthless and despicable bounty hunter. He is a Black man and works alongside the son of Tubman’s enslaver, Gideon Brodess (Joe Alwyn), to capture Tubman. Long’s violence is only directed towards Black women in the film. Many on Twitter did not believe a slave bounty hunter could be Black.</p>
<p>According to <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/movies/2019/10/30/harriet-tubman-fact-checking-new-movie/2502104001/"><em>USA Today’s</em> fact check</a> with <em>Harriet</em> historical consultant Kate Clifford Larson (who is white) and Lemmons, while Black bounty hunters were “much fewer” in numbers than white slave hunters, they did in fact exist. Further, where Lemmons took creative liberty with Tubman’s plantation owners, such as Gideon, who was not a real person, the Brodess family, including matriarch Eliza Brodess (Jennifer Nettles), were Tubman’s actual enslavers. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GqoEs4cG6Uw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A trailer for ‘Harriet’/Focus Features.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Is the backlash justified?</h2>
<p>First, slavery is not solely an American reality. The term “trans-Atlantic slavery” denotes the forced movement of people from West Africa to the “New World,” which means whether one’s citizenship is British or American, slavery has impacted every person of African descent.</p>
<p>Second, I can see where <em>Harriet</em> sends the message that Black men were equally abusive as white men during slavery. The film’s depiction not only gives the impression that Black men had levels of agency comparable to white men but also that we, as viewers, should give whites a pass for the brutality of slavery. </p>
<p>In reality, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/41305880?seq=1">Black men were just as abused</a> as Black women during slavery. The violence experienced was not just at the hands of white men, but also <a href="https://www.history.com/news/white-women-slaveowners-they-were-her-property">white women</a>. However, that depiction does not make <em>Harriet</em> the “<a href="https://twitter.com/BlackGlobeVilla/status/1190362598715379714?s=20">most anti-Black movie ever made</a>,” as some declared on Twitter. </p>
<p>It is really important to ask why Black viewers harshly critique Black and women-produced films but turn a blind eye to white and male-produced films about Black people that feel like attacks to our mental health.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303750/original/file-20191126-112545-9ekdrz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/303750/original/file-20191126-112545-9ekdrz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303750/original/file-20191126-112545-9ekdrz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303750/original/file-20191126-112545-9ekdrz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303750/original/file-20191126-112545-9ekdrz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303750/original/file-20191126-112545-9ekdrz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/303750/original/file-20191126-112545-9ekdrz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A scene from ‘Django Unchained.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(The Weinstein Company)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Quentin Tarantino’s <em>Django Unchained</em>, for instance, used the N-word an astonishing <a href="https://www.houstonchronicle.com/local/gray-matters/article/Tarantino-and-the-n-word-Why-I-hated-The-6735878.php">110 times</a>, and in <em>The Hateful Eight,</em> it was used 65 times. But Samuel L. Jackson <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/06/movies/samuel-l-jackson-defends-use-of-epithet-in-hateful-eight.html">defended its use</a>. As <a href="https://gawker.com/the-complete-history-of-quentin-tarantino-saying-nigge-1748731193"><em>Gawker</em> reporter</a> Rich Juzwiak aptly asked, “I can’t help but wonder if Tarantino is inventing excuses, via his films’ premises, to have his characters use [the N-word] … as many times as possible in a single movie.” </p>
<p>Critics need to step back and ask why actors like Jackson are so critical of Black British actors being cast in Black-produced films to play Black people in dignified and heroic narratives, but come to the defence of white filmmakers who have also <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/what-django-unchained-got-wrong-a-review-from-national-museum-of-african-american-history-and-culture-director-lonnie-bunch-1471712/">taken liberties with the historical facts of slavery</a> in their films.</p>
<h2>A self-emancipating wonder woman</h2>
<p>Tubman is believed to have arrived in St. Catharines in 1851. She helped to establish a Black community there, was actively involved in local organizations and was also a member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, <a href="https://salemchapelbmechurch.ca/index.html">Salem Chapel</a>, located on North Street, where she resided. </p>
<p>When Tubman arrives in St. Catharines in the movie, she’s there for about 30 seconds of screen time, as if her time north of the border was a blip in her story when she was, and remains, a part of that city’s historical memory. For Canadians, this should be the most disappointing part of <em>Harriet.</em> </p>
<p>The film is about Harriet Tubman, a Black freedom-seeker and self-emancipating wonder woman. It is not about Black bounty hunters or white enslavers. </p>
<p>We need to encourage more Black women filmmakers to do the work of centring our voices, not tear them down. <em>Harriet</em> has its issues, no doubt. But if perfection is the bar to which we hold Black women filmmakers, sadly, fewer films about us will be made. </p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/ca/newsletters?utm_source=TCCA&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/127493/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Cheryl Thompson receives funding from SSHRC Insight Development Grant. </span></em></p>Does the new film misrepresent Harriet Tubman’s legacy as claimed by many Twitter users?Cheryl Thompson, Assistant Professor, Creative Industries, Toronto Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1055662018-10-25T23:14:16Z2018-10-25T23:14:16ZNew ads ask, ‘Do white people dominate the outdoors?’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242316/original/file-20181025-71023-1h7q3jd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">There is a long history of 'visual apartheid' in the advertising of the outdoors industry -- an absence of Indigenous, Black and other people of colour. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Unsplash/Esther wiegardt)</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Do white people dominate the outdoors?” David Labistour, <a href="https://www.mec.ca/en/article/outside-is-for-everyone">CEO of Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC), asked.</a> As Canada’s iconic retailer of clothing and equipment for the outdoors, what MEC says matters. </p>
<p>In his post on the company blog, Labistour says: “Historically, the models we’ve used in our catalogues and campaigns and on <a href="https://www.mec.ca/en/p/diversity">our website</a> have been predominantly white.” Labistour apologizes for this. </p>
<p>He goes on to say: “As CEO of MEC, I promise that moving forward, we will make sure we’re inspiring and representing the diverse community that already exists in the outdoors.”</p>
<p>There is a long history of <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00222216.2004.11950034">visual apartheid</a> in the advertising of the outdoors industry. What I mean by this is the absence of Indigenous, Black and other people of colour in the ads. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242110/original/file-20181024-71017-h1drqx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242110/original/file-20181024-71017-h1drqx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242110/original/file-20181024-71017-h1drqx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242110/original/file-20181024-71017-h1drqx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=361&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242110/original/file-20181024-71017-h1drqx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242110/original/file-20181024-71017-h1drqx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242110/original/file-20181024-71017-h1drqx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=453&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘We’ve let our members down:’ collage of MEC catalogues.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">MEC</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Do a quick internet search for “outdoors recreation advertising,” and you will find mostly white people in the images. Whether it is canoeing, skiing, bicycling or camping, Black faces are not there. </p>
<h2>Harriet Tubman was a wilderness expert</h2>
<p>In reality, Black people have a long history of being in the outdoors in Canada. This history has been whitewashed not just in outdoors advertising but also in <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/conl.12431">conservation</a>, <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781317675112/chapters/10.4324%2F9781315771342-8">outdoors education</a> and <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/cag.12025">environmental education</a>. </p>
<p><a href="http://harriettubmancanada.com/index.html">Harriet Tubman</a> is one of my inspirations for researching Black people in the Canadian outdoors. As a historical figure, she is associated with bringing fugitive slaves from the United States to safety in Canada via the Underground Railroad. </p>
<p>Viewed another way, Tubman was also an expert in outdoor survival skills. She made some 20 treks across the border, some in winter, using different routes to avoid the slave catchers. She was successful as her level of wilderness expertise was phenomenal.</p>
<h2>Arctic exploration</h2>
<p>The outdoors industry likes to suggest an adventurous lifestyle in its advertising. For winter activities they could seek inspiration from <a href="https://archive.org/details/cu31924029882739/page/n0">Matthew Henson an Arctic explorer</a>. A colleague of Robert Perry, Henson spent over 20 years trying to reach the North Pole. </p>
<p>The quest to be the first person on that spot was a holy grail of white explorers for two centuries. Few expect a Black man to share that prize. Henson writes about his adventures in his book <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/20923/20923-h/20923-h.htm"><em>A Negro Explorer at the North Pole</em></a>. Published in 1912, Henson makes it clear that the explorations depended on the expertise of the Inuit and their knowledge of the land. </p>
<p>Canoeing is an iconic summer activity in Canada. And Black people have always been there too. The voyageurs, paddling along the rivers and lakes of the country, in the fur trade with Indigenous people, is part of Canadian outdoors history. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242317/original/file-20181025-71020-1jjjpj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242317/original/file-20181025-71020-1jjjpj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242317/original/file-20181025-71020-1jjjpj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242317/original/file-20181025-71020-1jjjpj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242317/original/file-20181025-71020-1jjjpj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242317/original/file-20181025-71020-1jjjpj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242317/original/file-20181025-71020-1jjjpj5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Canoeing is a classic Canadian activity.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">HB Mertz /Unsplash</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Missing from that picture are the Black voyageurs and fur traders. For instance, there was <a href="https://blackpast.org/aah/bonga-george-1802-1880">George Bonga, a Black and Indigenous fur trader in Montreal</a> in the 1800s. On the other side of the country, there was <a href="https://edmontonjournal.com/opinion/columnists/paula-simons-strong-and-free-the-adventures-of-joseph-lewis-edmontons-first-black-voyageur">Joseph Lewis a Black fur trader and explorer</a> in Edmonton in the early 1800s. </p>
<h2>Cowboys</h2>
<p>Cowboys riding across the prairies, under the great big blue sky, is another mythologized image in the outdoors history of Canada. And once again the myth excludes <a href="https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/john-ware">Black cowboys such as John Ware</a>. </p>
<p>Black cowboys helped to create the ranching industry in the prairies in the 1880s. The Calgary Stampede is part of their legacy. Canada Post honoured John Ware on a stamp in 2012.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242293/original/file-20181025-71020-4e1t9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/242293/original/file-20181025-71020-4e1t9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242293/original/file-20181025-71020-4e1t9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242293/original/file-20181025-71020-4e1t9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=366&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242293/original/file-20181025-71020-4e1t9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242293/original/file-20181025-71020-4e1t9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/242293/original/file-20181025-71020-4e1t9l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=460&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Left: John Ware and his family in Red Deer river, Alberta, c. 1896. Right: John Ware stamp, 2012.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.glenbow.org/collections/search/findingAids/archhtm/ware.cfm">Glenbow Archives/Canada Post</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Advertising dollars</h2>
<p>It makes good business sense for MEC to include Indigenous, Black and other people of colour in its advertising. They are becoming the largest segment of the population. The <a href="https://www.ubcpress.ca/rethinking-the-great-white-north">myth of Canada as a white nation</a> is crumbling under the census numbers. If the outdoors industry is to thrive, it must reflect diversity in its advertising.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WS7_T5txs60?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">MEC video explains why they changed their advertising to better reflect their members.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>MEC has taken a step towards increasing racial diversity in the Canadian outdoors. Let us hope that other organizations such as parks, nature conservancies and environmental groups follow their lead. </p>
<p>However, it is too easy for the first step to be the only step. A commitment to diversity must be internal as well as external, and move beyond simply expanding a customer base, to employing Indigenous, Black and other people of colour and supporting their access to the great Canadian outdoors.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/105566/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jacqueline L. Scott does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Canada’s iconic retailer of outdoor adventure gear recently decided to change its mostly white image by diversifying the catalogue to better reflect the reality of its customers.Jacqueline L. Scott, PhD Student, University of TorontoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/720482017-02-07T03:40:29Z2017-02-07T03:40:29ZBefore sanctuary cities, here’s how black Americans protected fugitive slaves<p>Over the past year, public debate over the issue of “sanctuary” cities has become increasingly commonplace but no less urgent. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/01/19/us/ap-us-sanctuary-cities-chicago-the-latest.html">Local communities</a> and institutions such as <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/01/25/580577182/albanian-immigrant-holed-up-in-detroit-church-to-avoid-deportation">churches</a> have been shielding undocumented children and adults from federal efforts to deport them. And many lawmakers and judges <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/18/us/politics/justice-department-sanctuary-cities-criminal-charges-elected-offiicals.html">continue to challenge</a> the Trump administration’s efforts to criminalize state and local officials who endorse the “sanctuary” movement.</p>
<p>This standoff between federal authorities and local communities is hardly new. As a scholar of slavery and emancipation, I have studied the long history of African-American communities and how they offered sanctuary or protection to the most vulnerable among them. </p>
<p>In particular, I have looked at how in the 19th century, before the abolition of slavery in the United States, free black people openly defied the <a href="http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/fugitive.asp">Fugitive Slave Law of 1850</a>. </p>
<h2>The law that supported rights to slaves</h2>
<p>The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 built on <a href="https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript#articleIV2">provisions in the Constitution</a> and a <a href="https://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/connections/slaves-court/history.html">1793 law</a> that barred slaves from escaping from a state where slavery was legal to one where it had been banned.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155742/original/image-20170206-27189-1m0u53g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155742/original/image-20170206-27189-1m0u53g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155742/original/image-20170206-27189-1m0u53g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155742/original/image-20170206-27189-1m0u53g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155742/original/image-20170206-27189-1m0u53g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155742/original/image-20170206-27189-1m0u53g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155742/original/image-20170206-27189-1m0u53g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Fugitive Slaves Recaptured: 1850.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/washington_area_spark/19337155846/in/photolist-vsKYJJ-kZ6wG1-kZ5BjZ-j4V46N-kZ6wtA-g1gbtS-kZ6wVs-kZ53kK-5xuE89-bfYvag-kZ5eoB-axmZDq-A65Fb-kZ5AQc-kZ6wmw-gbpGL6-kZ5B98-boTEEV-9wUYKZ-a6uxGP-95w2ym-kZ5Bhz-kZ53L4-kZ5M4Z-r1nmEW-kZ53C8-fTJQes-5xqgpV-fTJMCX-fTJU5p-5xuEm7-aFuW3M-kZ6wwS-5xuE3L-ambDA2-fTHNKz-a9DD9J-f7EzS-fTHTJd-fTJNkh-acMev-kZ5Bei-8rUaHr-8rXbtw-fTK8TV-8rU3UR-5Sgder-5mbQzQ-8rTYvr-A65Ax">Washington Area Spark</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>While the Constitution mainly called for the return of runaway slaves, the 1850 law <a href="https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript#toc-article-iv-">vastly expanded</a> the authority of federal law enforcement officials. The law criminalized helping or harboring a runaway slave and denied the accused person the right to offer testimony in her or his own defense.</p>
<p>The 1850 law confirmed what generations of enslaved African-Americans knew too well: They existed as property, not persons, in the eyes of the law. </p>
<p>Enslaved women and men could not enter legal marriages because slaveholders claimed their bodies, time, movement and even reproductive capacity. <a href="https://memory.loc.gov/ammem/awhhtml/awlaw3/slavery.html">Law</a> and custom dictated that <a href="http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14030.html">enslaved women gave birth to enslaved children</a>.</p>
<h2>Constant threat of enslavement</h2>
<p>Freedom was always precarious for black Americans who stood on the legal margins of society. Blackness and enslavement were so firmly connected in antebellum America that to be free and black was to exist as a civic anomaly.</p>
<p>Free black people were recognized as citizens, though with limited rights, in the states in which they lived. Their standing as citizens of the nation <a href="http://thepenguinpress.com/book/more-than-freedom-fighting-for-black-citizenship-in-a-white-republic/">remained ambiguous</a> until after the Civil War and the abolition of slavery in the United States.</p>
<p>The threat of enslavement stalked many free black people. <a href="http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/northup/northup.html">Solomon Northup</a>, for example, was a free man who lived in upstate New York; in 1841 he was abducted and sold into slavery in Louisiana. The 1850 law made it worse. Those who had seized their freedom by running away became more vulnerable to kidnapping and enslavement. </p>
<p>Slaveholders advertised widely for the return of their property – the runaway slaves – and often hired men to track and capture fugitives. Newspaper reports and broadsides announced the arrival of slave catchers, warning free black people to remain vigilant especially in their interactions with the police.</p>
<p>On Nov. 1, 1850, <a href="http://www.accessible-archives.com/collections/the-liberator/">The Liberator</a>, the Boston anti-slavery newspaper published by <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p1561.html">William Lloyd Garrison</a>, a radical white abolitionist, alerted local residents to the presence of “two prowling villains.” It said that the two slave catchers had come to Boston from Macon, Georgia, with the aim of capturing <a href="http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/craft/craft.html">William and Ellen Craft</a>, a runaway slave couple, “under the infernal Fugitive Slave Bill, and carrying them back to the hell of Slavery.”</p>
<p>Prompted to action by the Crafts’ plight, Boston’s black community gathered to plan their opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law. They adopted a set of resolutions, including a pledge “to resist oppression” and any attacks on their freedom. </p>
<h2>Escaping bondage</h2>
<p>Many prominent black activists gained their freedom by running away. Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs are among the best-known fugitive slaves. After liberating themselves, they continued to challenge the laws and customs that stripped black people of their freedom.</p>
<p>After the 1850 law was enacted, many black people set their sights on Canada, convinced they could find safety only outside of the United States. <a href="http://www.macmillanlearning.com/Catalog/product/harriettubmanandthefightforfreedom-firstedition-horton">Harriet Tubman</a> was among them. She shepherded runaways from Maryland through New York and Pennsylvania to Canada, where slavery had been abolished in 1834.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155752/original/image-20170206-27217-wasd4y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155752/original/image-20170206-27217-wasd4y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155752/original/image-20170206-27217-wasd4y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155752/original/image-20170206-27217-wasd4y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155752/original/image-20170206-27217-wasd4y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155752/original/image-20170206-27217-wasd4y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155752/original/image-20170206-27217-wasd4y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A statute of Frederick Douglass at West Chester University.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/wcupa/14410155908/in/photolist-nXnPiW-phCWJZ-phSik3-p1qSKT-pfSktC-8ChGva-8CkPG1-p1qRai-p1piEP-p1qLRQ-p1q3k9-p1pmEC-dCgqH8-p1qSbg-phT7N9-phVdui-p1qbRh-GVFRw-ab4J5a-p1qhv1-p1qCUr-phUEKM-phUxca-phSVuh-phSFQU-phD1dT-p1p6xT-p1qZze-phV8ED-p1qRyA-phCtAR-phSEsU-p1qL9g-p1qsy6-p1pRR2-8ChGd6-pfSLX3-phCLxB-p1psAq-p1pqJu-p1qBLe-phSsK5-phUwDr-p1qdAQ-phUxJn-p1pQ7k-phCNz2-p1qK1L-phUWvV-p1r2ma">West Chester University</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Frederick Douglass, perhaps the most widely known self-liberated slave, also left the United States to safeguard his freedom. <a href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469628578/colored-travelers/">Douglass had escaped</a> from bondage in Maryland in 1838 and then traveled to England and Ireland. </p>
<p>The 1845 publication of his <a href="http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/douglass/douglass.html">“Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, Written by Himself</a>” placed him in danger of being captured. Douglass returned to the U.S. in 1847 only after his English supporters negotiated with his owner to purchase his freedom. </p>
<p>Experiences of escape and exile prompted free black women and men to lament America’s denial of their humanity but also invigorated their determination to bring slavery to an end.</p>
<h2>Fighting for freedom</h2>
<p>In the wake of the 1850 law, many black people openly engaged in physical confrontations with law enforcement. Tubman, for example, <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674908505">fought the arrest</a> and detainment of accused fugitives. </p>
<p>Almost immediately after the 1850 law was enacted, Frederick Douglass quickly organized a <a href="http://coloredconventions.org">mass gathering</a> in protest. In September 1850, hundreds of black and white <a href="http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/2253_reg.html">opponents of slavery gathered in Cazenovia, New York</a> to hear Douglass and other prominent abolitionists, some of them former slaves, speak out against the law.</p>
<p>In his <a href="http://www.accessible-archives.com/collections/african-american-newspapers/the-north-star/">published summary of the Cazenovia meeting</a>, Douglass charged, “slave laws should be held in perfect contempt.” He also maintained that enslaved people should defy the laws of slavery and liberate themselves by escaping from their owners whenever they could. </p>
<p>In short, Douglass called on free people, black and white, as well as enslaved people to defy state and federal laws that protected slavery.</p>
<p>African-American history is American history. Black people’s lives, their words and actions, including their commitment to defying the laws of slavery, helped define the meanings of freedom and citizenship in the United States. </p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of an article originally published on Feb. 6, 2017.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/72048/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Barbara Krauthamer received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (2003; 2001).</span></em></p>In the 19th century, slaveholders advertised widely for runaway slaves and often hired men to track and capture fugitives. African-American communities offered sanctuary space to the runaways.Barbara Krauthamer, Professor of History, UMass AmherstLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/582452016-04-22T10:03:07Z2016-04-22T10:03:07ZWho was the first woman depicted on American currency?<p>When the <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2015/06/17/news/economy/woman-on-ten-dollar-bill/">Treasury Department announced</a> that a woman would grace the vignette of a newly designed US$10 bill in 2020 – rather than Founding Father Alexander Hamilton – there was a groundswell of support for the plan, as well as <a href="https://www.billofrightsinstitute.org/educate/educator-resources/lessons-plans/current-events/down-with-hamilton-and-jackson-why-our-currency-may-be-changing/">heated debate</a>. </p>
<p>Even before Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew made his announcement, a nonprofit organization called “<a href="http://www.womenon20s.org">Women On 20s</a>” had launched a major online campaign urging the government to put a woman on U.S. currency. Its sights were set on the $20 bill, however. </p>
<p>Ultimately that campaign – as well as one by Hamilton boosters – was successful as the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/04/20/u-s-to-keep-hamilton-on-front-of-10-bill-put-portrait-of-harriet-tubman-on-20-bill/">government decided</a> to leave the first Treasury secretary on the $10 and instead replace the face of seventh president and slaveholder Andrew Jackson on the $20 with that of Harriet Tubman, a self-liberated woman who led other enslaved people to freedom on the Underground Railroad. Jackson’s portrait will remain, but on the back of the bill. </p>
<p>Despite still having to share the monetary space with Jackson, this is a significant step forward for our country, full of symbolism and a sense of progress – even if long overdue. </p>
<p>Like the election of the first African-American president eight years ago, having the image of a black woman front and center on our nation’s paper money was until recently a far-fetched dream that will soon become a reality. It will have tangible implications for women of all ages and backgrounds for a long time to come. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, however, throughout this important conversation and debate, there have been some inaccuracies about the history of women on paper money. </p>
<p>My purpose in writing this article as a historian who has researched the symbolic links between money, colonialism and nationalism is to offer a contextualized global and historical perspective on the depiction of women and African-Americans on currency. </p>
<p>It’s also to answer a frequent question: who actually was the first woman on a banknote issued in what is now the United States?</p>
<h2>Women on world currencies</h2>
<p>While women have been featured on coins around the world since ancient times, they did not appear on banknotes until the 17th century – about 700 years after the <a href="http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1914560_1914558_1914593,00.html">first paper money began circulating in China</a>.</p>
<p>Great Britain was first to do so by putting “Britannia,” the female personification of the island nation, on the <a href="http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/archive/Documents/history/britannia.pdf">inaugural banknotes issued by the Bank of England</a> after its founding in the late 17th century. </p>
<p>Depictions of both symbolic female figures like Britannia and actual women have since appeared on the paper money of many countries, from Albania to Zimbabwe. These representations can be divided into five main categories: as national personifications of mythical goddesses, which represent a nation, its people or empire; as allegorical images; as unnamed or general members of societies; as real, historical individuals; and as rulers.</p>
<p>National personifications, for example, include Britannia, Germania, Hibernia (Ireland), Columbia, (Mother) Russia and Scotia (Scotland). </p>
<p>The list of real-life women depicted on money is longer, ranging from ancient historical figures such as Warrior Queen Zenobia of the Palmyrene Empire in Ancient Syria to monarchs including Britain’s Queen Victoria and Russia’s Catherine the Great to national heroines like Jamaica’s Queen Nanny of the Maroons. The warrior queen led a small band of escaped African slaves in a successful guerrilla war against the British in the 18th century. She is also the subject of a 2015 documentary that I coproduced (with director Roy T. Anderson) called “<a href="https://www.facebook.com/nannythemovie">Queen Nanny: Legendary Maroon Chieftainess</a>.” </p>
<h2>Who was first in the U.S.?</h2>
<p>In the U.S., paper money has been issued by both governmental and private entities and has circulated in the country since 1690, including during the Civil War period, when the Confederacy printed its own currency. </p>
<p>While Tubman’s selection for depiction on the $20 bill is historic, she is not the first woman – either mythical or actual – to appear on paper money in the United States. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119707/original/image-20160421-26983-10j8l2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119707/original/image-20160421-26983-10j8l2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119707/original/image-20160421-26983-10j8l2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=250&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119707/original/image-20160421-26983-10j8l2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=250&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119707/original/image-20160421-26983-10j8l2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=250&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119707/original/image-20160421-26983-10j8l2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119707/original/image-20160421-26983-10j8l2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119707/original/image-20160421-26983-10j8l2i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Martha Washington, the first First Lady, was the last woman to adorn an American note.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Pocahontas was the first nonmythical woman to earn that distinction on U.S. paper money, having been depicted on the back of the $20 bill from 1865 to 1869 and on the $20 bill in 1875. </p>
<p>Martha Washington was the only other woman to appear on U.S. federal paper money. She was on the front of the $1 Silver Certificate of 1886 and 1891 and (alongside that of her husband) on the back of the $1 Silver Certificate of 1896. Other women such as first ladies Rachel Jackson and Dolley Madison have been depicted on private banknotes.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119704/original/image-20160421-26983-11mmadu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119704/original/image-20160421-26983-11mmadu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119704/original/image-20160421-26983-11mmadu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119704/original/image-20160421-26983-11mmadu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119704/original/image-20160421-26983-11mmadu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=551&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119704/original/image-20160421-26983-11mmadu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=692&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119704/original/image-20160421-26983-11mmadu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=692&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119704/original/image-20160421-26983-11mmadu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=692&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lucy Pickens was the first woman portrayed on paper currency in what is now the U.S.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CSA-T65-$100-1864.jpg">National Numismatic Collection, National Museum of American History</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>However, the first nonmythical, historical woman to appear on any paper currency within our current borders was not on a U.S. bill but rather on Confederate money: “Queen of the Confederacy” Lucy Holcombe Pickens (and South Carolina’s first lady) was portrayed on Confederate $1 bills of 1862 and 1863 and the $100 bill of 1862 through 1864. </p>
<p>In other words, contrary to news reports, Pickens was actually the first woman to be depicted on paper money issued in the U.S., and <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2015/06/18/martha-washington-united-states-dollar-bills-silver-dollar/28933355/.">not Pocahontas or Martha Washington</a>. </p>
<h2>African-American depictions on paper money</h2>
<p>Tubman’s image on the $20 bill is hugely significant when we consider that practically all previous images of African-American women and men depicted on U.S. paper currency were stock images of nameless slaves. </p>
<p>In the 1850s and 1860s, slaves were illustrated on private banknotes in southern states and on Confederate paper currency. In 1858, for example, the Bank of the Commonwealth in Virginia <a href="http://www.colorsofmoney.com/miamip1.htm">depicted a slave mother and child</a> on a $50 banknote. Free blacks were depicted on a $10 banknote issued by the Bank of Catasauqua in Pennsylvania in the late 1850s. An 1861 Confederate States of America $10 bill <a href="http://exhibitions.blogs.lib.lsu.edu/?page_id=707">depicted a slave picking cotton</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119800/original/image-20160422-17388-ntl7b0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119800/original/image-20160422-17388-ntl7b0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119800/original/image-20160422-17388-ntl7b0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=262&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119800/original/image-20160422-17388-ntl7b0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=262&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119800/original/image-20160422-17388-ntl7b0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=262&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119800/original/image-20160422-17388-ntl7b0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=329&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119800/original/image-20160422-17388-ntl7b0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=329&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119800/original/image-20160422-17388-ntl7b0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=329&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This Confederate bill from 1862 portrayed nameless slaves in the fields.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The signatures of four African-American men who served as registers of the Treasury have also appeared on the greenback. And during the Carter administration, Azie Taylor Morton became the first and only African-American to serve as U.S. treasurer. As such, her signature graced all currency issued during her tenure.</p>
<p>Aside from currency, there are other noteworthy historical and contemporary precedents for commemorating African-American women on our national symbols. </p>
<p>Many African-American women have been featured on U.S. postage stamps, especially under the Black Heritage series. Like national currencies, postage stamps are part of a government’s mass marketing of its history, identity, culture and achievements. The <a href="http://stamps.org/userfiles/file/albums/BlackHeritage.pdf">Black Heritage series</a> has depicted women such as Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Mahalia Jackson, “Ma” Rainey, Billie Holiday and Madam C.J. Walker. </p>
<h2>Why it matters</h2>
<p>The portrait of a woman on current paper currency is long overdue. </p>
<p>With her image, the U.S. is now moving on from the depiction of African-Americans as slaves on Confederate banknotes to the portrait of a woman who fought for liberation from slavery. And that liberator’s appearance ends a long absence of African-Americans – and women of any race or ethnicity – from U.S. paper currency.</p>
<p>The Treasury Department says it aims to unveil the design of the currency by 2020, in time for the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage, when the 19th Amendment was ratified by enough states to become part of the U.S. Constitution. The new $20 likely won’t enter circulation for another few years.</p>
<p>Even if it takes a while before we actually see these new $20 bills, the fact that Harriet Tubman’s visage will grace them underscores just how far we have come as one nation. And that she will replace a slaveowner makes it the perfect poetic and monetary justice.</p>
<p><em>Editor’s note: due to a typo, Andrew Jackson was initially inadvertently identified as the 17th president of the U.S. He was the seventh president.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/58245/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Harcourt Fuller does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The announcement that Harriet Tubman will be the first woman on U.S. currency in more than a century recalls the history of female – and African-American – portrayals on money.Harcourt Fuller, Assistant Professor of History, Georgia State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.