Harriet Tubman

Harriet Tubman (born 1820 in Dorchester County, Maryland, died March 10, 1913 in Auburn, New York), also known as Black Moses, was an African-American freedom fighter. An escaped slave, she worked as a guerrilla, farmhand, lumberjack, laundress and cook, refugee organizer, raid leader and intelligence commander, nurse and healer, revival speaker, feminist and fundraiser, all as part of the struggle for liberation from slavery and racism.

She was born into slavery in Maryland. Usually it is thought that she was born in around 1820, but that data cannot be authenticated because there are no records of her birth. Harriet herself claimed she was born around 1825. Born Araminta Ross, she later took the name Harriet after her mother. Around 1844 she married John Tubman, a free man. She endured years of inhumane treatment from her various owners, including an incident where an overseer hurled a two-pound weight in her direction, striking her in the head. As a result of the blow, she suffered intermittent bouts of narcolepsy the rest of her life.

On hearing that the slaves of the plantation were to be sold, she took her emancipation into her own hands, and escaped northward, leaving behind her husband who did not want to follow. On her way she was assisted by sympathetic Quakers, members of the Abolitionist movement who were instrumental in maintaining the Underground Railroad. She herself was later to become famous as "Moses", one of the most successful guides of the Underground Railroad (Underground Railroad "conductor") ; she made many trips South to help other slaves escape. With 19 expeditions where she personally guided around 300 slaves to freedom, she was never captured and, in her own words, "never lost a passenger" despite the combined bounty for her which totalled $40,000, the highest amount for any conductor. During the American Civil War, in addition to working as a cook and a nurse, she served as a spy for the North, and again was never captured. And she guided hundreds of people trapped in slavery up to the free states, during the Civil War.