Black History fact #17: Harriet Tubman

What's going on, everybody. Welcome to another episode of a day with crime, black history fact edition. Of course I am your man, David. Let's jump in. 

Today's black history fact is one that I thought a lot of people knew, but I'm finding a lot of people don't know just as low and be a little bit longer today just because of who the person is.

And today we going to talk about Harriet Tubman. Harriet Tubman was the first woman to lead a us military operation [00:01:00] in 1863. Tubman led our regiment in the raid on combat. Tubman planned and carried out the attack, which free to some, several hundred and 50 enslaved people and laid waste to the Confederates encampment.

A few weeks later, the 54th Massachusetts regiment and all black volunteer regiment executed a similar rate up the river in Darien, George. All right. So, as I stated before, this can be a little bit longer. I'm not going to be able to read everything to you about the grade Harriet Tubman, but as usual, you can find the link down below in the show notes.

If you want to go and read a lot more about her, cause I could be here all night just with the information. So let me give you some of the pertinent stuff to get you on your way. Harriet Tubman was born our, a mental raw. In March of [00:02:00] 1822 and she died March 10th, 1913. She wasn't American abolitionists and political activists born into slavery, Tubman escaped, and subsequently made some 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 enslaved people, including family and friends using the network of anti-slavery activists and safe houses known as the underground world.

During the American civil war, she served as an armed scout and spy for the union army. And later gears told me was an activist in the movement for women's suffrage, born enslaved and Dorchester county, Maryland Tubman was beaten and whipped by her various masters as a child and early in life, she suffered a traumatic head wound when an irate overseer threw a heavy middle weight intending to hit another enslaved person, but hit her.

The injury caused dizziness [00:03:00] pain and spells of hypersomnia, which occurred throughout her life. After her injury, me began experiencing strange visions and vivid dreams where she ascribed to premonitions from God. These experiences combined with her Methodist upbringing led her to become devoutly religious in 1849.

Coming to escape to Philadelphia only to return to Maryland, to rescue her family. Soon after slowly one group at a time, she brought relatives with her out of the state and eventually guided dozens of other enslaved people to freedom traveling by night and an extreme secrecy Tubman or Moses as she was called, never lost a passenger.

After the fugitive slave act of 1850 was passed. She helped guide fugitives farther north into British north America, Canada now, and help the newly freed [00:04:00] enslaved people to find work. Some men met John Brown in 1858 in Hilton plant and recruit supporters for his 1859 raid on Harper's ferry. When the civil war began, men worked for the union army first as a cook and nurse.

And then as the armed scout, The first woman to lead an armed expedition in the war she got at the raid at Kumba. He ferry was liberated more than 700 enslaved people. After the war. She retired to the family home on property. She had purchased in 1859 and Auburn New York, where she cared for her aging parents.

She was active in the woman's suffrage movement until illness overtook her. And she had to be admitted to a home for elderly African Americans that she had helped to establish years earlier after her death in 1913, she became an icon of courage [00:05:00] and freedom. All right. So let's learn a little bit more about Harriet today.

So Tubman, of course, as I said, was born or a mentor, mentee, Ross, they call it a mentee for short to his slave parents, Harriet rich green and Ben Ross RIT was owned by Mary Patterson and Broadus. And later her son, Edward Ben was held by Anthony Thompson, who became Mary Broadus, his second husband, and who ran a large plantation near the Blackwater river in the Madison area of Dorchester county.

As with many enslaved people in the United States, neither the exact year nor place of Tubman's birth is known. And historians differ as to the best estimate. Kate Larson, the records, the years, 1822, based on the midwife payment and several other historical documents, including her runaway advertisement.

While Jean human says the best current [00:06:00] evidence suggests that Tubman was born in 1820, but it might have been a year or two. Catherine Clinton knows that Tubman reported the year of her birth is 1825 or her desert ticket list 1815 and her gravestone lists 1820 Tubman's maternal grandmother modesty arrived in the U S on a slave ship from Africa.

No information is available about her other ancestors as a child Tubman was told that she seemed like an Ashanti person because of her character. So no evidence has been found to confirm or deny this lineage. Her mother writ, who may have had a white father, was a cook for the Broadus family. Her father, Ben was a skill woodsmen who managed the timber work on Thompson's plantation.

They married around 1808 and according to court records had nine children together. Lena, Mariah ready. So Robert [00:07:00] mentee, who was Harriet being. Rachel Henry and Moses rich struggled to keep her family together as slavery threatened to tear it apart. Edward brought his soul three of her daughters, Lina, Mariah, ready.

And so separating them from the family forever. When a trader from Georgia approached Brody about buying rich youngest son. She hit him for your month, aided by other enslaved people and Friedman and the community. At one point, she confronted her owner about the sale. Finally brought this and the Georgia man came toward the slave quarters to seize the child.

While Rick told them you are after my son, that the first man that comes into my house, I was split his head open Rodas, backed away and abandoned the. Tell him his biographers agree that stories told about this event within the family influenced her [00:08:00] belief in the possibilities of resistance. Harriet's mother was assigned to the big house and has scarce time for her family.

Consequently, as a child, Harriet took care of a younger brother and baby as was typical in large families when she was five or six years old brothers hired her out as a nurses made to a woman named Mrs. Tubman was ordered to care for the baby and rockets cradle, as it slept, when it woke up and cried, she was whipped.

She later recounted a particular day when she was last five times before breakfast, she carried the scars for the rest of her life, and she found ways to resist such as running away for five days, wearing layers of clothing as protection against beatings and fighting. As a child, tell him it also worked at the home of a planter named James Cook.

She had to check the muskrat traps in nearby marshes. Even after contracting measles, she became so ill that cooks in her [00:09:00] backs or Broadus where her mother nursed her back to health brokers. Dan hired her out again. She spoke later of her acute childhood homesickness, comparing herself to the boy on the sweaty.

And illusion to Stephen Foster song, old folks at home. As she grew older and stronger, she was assigned to field and force work, driving oxen, plowing, and hauling logs. As an adolescent Tubman suffered a severe head injury. When an overseer threw a two pound metal weight at another essay person who was attempting to flee the waist struck Tubman instead, which she said broke my school.

Bleeding and unconscious, she was returned to her owner's house and laid on the seat of a loom where she remained without medical care. For two days after this incident, Tubman frequently experienced extremely painful headaches. She also began having seizures. It was seemingly fall unconscious. Although she claimed to be aware [00:10:00] of her surroundings while appearing to be asleep.

This condition remained with her for the rest of her. And Larson suggests she may have suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy as a result of the injury. After her injury, Tubman began experiencing visions and vivid dreams, which she interpreted as revelations from God. The spiritual experiences had a profound effect on Tubman's personality and she acquired a passionate faith in God.

Although tummy was illiterate, she was told Bible stories by her mother and likely attended a Methodist church with her. She rejected the teachings of the new Testament, that urge slaves to be obedient and following guidance in the old Testament tells of deliverance. This religious perspective informed her actions throughout her life.

Anthony tells him promise to man, you met Tubman's father at the age of 45. After Thompson died, his son followed through with that promise in 18. [00:11:00] Tubman's father continued working as a timber estimator and format for the Thompson family. Several years later, Tubman contacted a white attorney and paid him $5 to investigate her mother's legal status.

The lawyer discovered that a former owner had issued instructions that tub his mother writ like her husband would be monumental at the age of 45. The records show that a similar provision would apply to rich children and that any children born after she reached 45 years of age were legally free. But the Patterson and Broadus families ignored this stipulation when they inherited the enslaved people, challenging it legally was an impossible task for Tubman.

And just so you guys know if you don't know what the word monument means, uh, it means it's the act of freeing slaves by the. So around 1844, she married a free black man named John Tubman. Although little is known about him or their [00:12:00] time together, the union was complicated because of her slave status and the mother status dictated that of children and any children born to Harriet and John would be enslaved, such a blended marriages, free people of color, marrying enslaved.

People were not uncommon on the Eastern shore of Maryland, where by this time half the black population was. Most African-American families have both free and enslaved members and Larson suggests that they might have planned to buy Tubman's freedom. Tubman changed her name from our mentor to Harriet soon after her marriage, though, the exact time it is unclear.

Larson suggests this happened right after the wedding. And Clinton suggests that it coincided with Tubman's plans to escape from slavery. And she adopted her mother's name, possibly as part of a religious conversation, or to honor another relative. So in 1849, tummy became elegant and which diminished her value as a slave.

It would British [00:13:00] tried to sell her, but could not find a buyer angry at him for trying to sell her. And for continuing to enslave her relatives, tell me, began to pray for her owner, asking God to make him change as. She said later, I prayed all night long from my master till the 1st of March and all the time, he was bringing people to look at me and trying to sell me.

When it appeared as though a sale was being concluded. I changed my prayer. She said, 1st of March, I began to pray, oh Lord, if you ain't never going to change that, man's heart. Kill him, Lord, and take him out of the way. A week later wrote his died and Tubman express regret for her earlier sentence. As a mini estate settlements, Broadus is death increased.

The likelihood that Tubman would be sold and her family broken apart, his widow Eliza began working to sell the family's enslaved people. Tell him me, refuse to wait for the Broadus family to decide her fate and despite her husband's efforts to display her. [00:14:00] There was one of two things. I had a right to, she explained later Liberty or death.

And if I could not have one, I would have the other Tubman and her brothers Ben in Henry escaped from slavery on September 17th, 1849. Somebody had been hired out to Anthony Thompson, the son of her father's former owner who owned a large plantation in an area called Poplar neck and neighboring Caroline county.

It is likely her brother's labored for Thompson as well because the enslaved or hired out to another household, Eliza Broadus probably did not recognize their absence as an escape attempt. For some time, two weeks later, she posted a runaway notice and the Cambridge Democrat offering a reward of up to $100 for each slave retail.

Once they had left tub, his brother had second thoughts. Ben may have just become a father. And the two men went back forcing Tubman to [00:15:00] return with them soon. Afterward, Tubman escaped again this time without her brothers, she tried to send word of her plans beforehand to her mother. She sang a coated song to marry a trusted fellow enslaved.

That was a fair, well, I'll meet you in the morning. She intoned, I'm bound for the promised. While her exact route is unknown to me, me use of the network known as the underground railroad, this informal, but well, organized system was composed of free and enslaved blacks, white abolitionists, and other activists.

Most prominent among the latter in Maryland at the time were members of the religious society of friends. Often call Quakers the Preston area near Poplar neck contained a substantial Quaker community. It was probably an important first stop doing Tubman's escape from there. She probably took a comment Ralph, where people fleeing slavery north east, along the chop tank river [00:16:00] through Delaware, and then north into Pennsylvania, a jury of nearly 90.

By foot would have taken between five days and three weeks to, and had to travel by night guided by the north star and trying to avoid slave catchers, eager to collect rewards for fugitive slaves, the conductors and the underground railroad used the substance for. At an early stop, the lady of the house instructed Tubman to sweep the yard.

So as to seem to be working for the family, when night fail, the family, hit her in a cart and took her to the next friendly house, giving her familiar rowdy with the words and marshes of the region to men lightly hitting these little cows during the day, the particulars of her first journey are unknown because other fugitives from stay reuse.

Tubman did not discuss them until later in life. She crossed into Pennsylvania with a feeling of relieving all [00:17:00] and recall the experience. Years later, when I found, I have crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything. The sun came like gold through the trees and over the fields.

And I felt like I was in heaven. So basically guys, uh, what ended up happening with that is we, she got free when she ran, she freed herself and everybody, when she got there was impressed because she made that trip alone all by herself and from a counselor I've read and things of that nature, that trip was treacherous and many people who sell to do it by themselves.

Never ever did it before. And so when she got there, they're like, Hey, who you with? And I'm like, I'm by myself. They kind of looked at her like, really? So Harriet Tubman was bad, man. She knew what she was doing. And she ran that many, [00:18:00] many, many more times. I'm not going to go into all of that. Now I'll leave that for you guys to read.

But that's why they called her Moses of her people because she was going back and she was liberating people. And yes, again, like I said, another episode, there was white people. That did not feel the same as the racist whites, without a lot of those white people, the underground railroad probably wouldn't have been as successful because they needed all those houses along the way that was willing to take the slaves that was running and to hide them throughout, you know, throughout the day of the night and to give them where they was going to go.

So let's go into this last part about her doing the American civil war. So when the civil war broke out in 1861, Tubman saw union victory as a key step toward the abolition of slavery general Benjamin Butler. For instance, aided escaped slaves flooding into Fort Monroe in Virginia Butler had declared these fugitives to [00:19:00] be contraband property seized by Northern forces and put them to work initially without pay and the Fort termin hope to offer her own expertise and skills to the union.

And soon as she joined a group of Boston and Philadelphia abolitionists heading to the Hilton head district in South Carolina, she became a fixture in this camps, particularly in port , South Carolina, assisting fugitives Tubman met with general David Hunter, a strong supporter of abolition. He declared all of the contrabands in the port Royal district free and began gathering former slaves for a regiment of black.

Us presidents, Abraham Lincoln, however, was not prepared to enforce emancipation on the Southern states and reprimanded hunter for his actions, Tubman, condemn Lincoln's response, and his general own woundedness to consider ending slavery in the U S for both moral and practical reasons. God won't let master Lincoln beat the south till he does the [00:20:00] right thing.

Master Lincoln. He's a great man and I am a poor Negro, but the Negro can tell master Lincoln how to save the money in the young men. He can do it by setting the Negro free. So poles, that was an awful big snake down there on the floor. He bites you folks all scared because you die. You send for a doctor to cut the bite, but the snake he rolled up there.

And while the doctor doing it, he bite you again. The doctor dug out that bite, but while the doctor doing it, the snake, he spring up and bite you again. So he keep doing it till you kill him. That's what master Lincoln ought to know. Tell Ms. Served as a nurse in port Royal, y'all preparing remedies from local plans and aiding soldiers suffering from dysentery.

She rendered assistance to men with small pox that she did not contract the disease herself started more rumors that she was blessed by. At first, she received government [00:21:00] rations to her work, but newly free blacks thought that she was getting special treatment to ease the tension. She gave up her right to the supplies and made money selling pods and root beer where she made in the evenings.

When Lincoln finally issued the emancipation proclamation in January of 1863, Tommy considered it an important step toward the goal of liberating, all black people from slaves. She renewed her support for a defeat of the Confederacy. And before long, she was head leading a band of Scouts through the land around port Royal.

The marshes in rivers in South Carolina were similar to those of the Eastern shore of Maryland. Those, her knowledge of covert travel and subterfuge among potential enemies was put together. Her group working under the orders of secretary of war, Edwin Stanton mapped the unfamiliar terrain, every kind of turd its habitats.

She later worked alongside Colonel James Montgomery and [00:22:00] provided him with key intelligence that aided the capture. Jacksonville, Florida later that year to me became the first woman to lead an armed assault during the civil war when Montgomery and his troops conducted in assault on a collection of plantations along kumbaya.

Tell him and served as a key advisor in a company, the raid on the morning of June 2nd, 1863, Tubman guided three steamboats around Confederate minds and the waters leading to the shore. Once a shore, the union troops set fire to the plantations, destroying infrastructure and seizing thousands of dollars worth of food and supplies.

When the steamboats sounded their whistles slaves throughout the area understood that it was being delivered. Tell me a wash that slave stampeded toward the boats. I never saw such a site. She said later describing a scene of chaos with women carrying still steaming pots of rice, pigs, squealing and bags, slung over shoulders [00:23:00] and babies hanging around their parents next.

Although their owners armed with hand guns and whips, try to stop the mass escape. Their efforts were nearly useless in the. As Confederate to race to the scene, steamboats packed full of slaves took off towards Bueford more than 750 slaves or rescued in the Combahee river, raid newspapers, heroine, toughness, patriotism, sagacity, energy, and ability.

And she was praised for her recruiting efforts. Most of the newly liberated men went on to join the union army. To me later, worked with a Colonel Robert gold Shaw. At the assault on Fort Wagner, reportedly serving him his last meal. She described the battle by saying, and then we saw the lightening and that was the guns.

And then we heard the thunder and that was the big guns. And then we heard the rain falling and that was the drops of blood falling. And when we came to get the crops, [00:24:00] it was dead men that we. For two more years, tell me work for the union forces tending to newly liberated slaves scouting into Confederate territory and nursing wounded soldiers in Virginia.

She also made periodic trips back to Auburn to visit her family and care for her parents. The Confederacy surrendered in April of 1865 after donating several more months of service Tubman headed home to. Doing good train ride to New York in 1869, the conductor told her to move from a half price section into the baggage car.

She refused showing the government issue papers that entitled her to ride there. He cursed at her and grabbed her, but she resisted and he summoned two other passengers for help. While she clenched at the railing, they muscle her way, breaking her arm in the process. They threw her into the back of his car causing more injuries.

As these events transpired, otherwise passengers, curse, Tubman, and shouted for the conductor to kick her off the train. [00:25:00] Her active defiance became a historical simmer later cited when Rosa parks refused to move from a bus seat in 1955, those things like that. Harriet Tubman is probably the first person to refuse to give a per seat on that train.

All right guys. So there's a ton more stuff to read. We'll leave this down here, but I'll leave you with this. It is said that when she was about to die, the, her last words was I go to prepare a place for you.

 all right, guys that does with this. And I thank you for tuning in to yet another black history fact here. Join me tomorrow, I have another one for you. 

As always need to get ahold of us, feel free to drop a line. At a day with crime@gmail.com. Also, don't forget [00:26:00] to visit the website, www.adaywithcrime.com. It is your one stop shop for everything that is a day with crime. Alright guys, as always be safe all there and be good to yourself. and each other. And I'm going to catch you guys on the next one.