Women’s History Month
Black Women Go To Prepare A Place
Honoring Harriet Tubman’s impact on the abolition movement
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“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.”
Over the course of 11 years and about 13 expeditions, some 70 slaves were rescued into a strange land called: freedom. In addition, nearly 60 slaves were also provided with specific instructions to escape to the north.
Determining your fate during slavery would have been unimaginable had it not been for the efforts of a Black American hero. The Moses of her people.
Slavery knew her as Araminta Ross. But in freedom, she was Harriet Tubman.
And Tubman had escaped prior to prepare a place; — for much, much more.
“When I found I had 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.”
Harriet Tubman was an American abolitionist and activist from Dorchester, Maryland. Born Araminta Ross, Tubman requested to be named after her mother, Harriet after escaping in 1850 and retaining her husband, John’s last name; — a free Black man when they married in 1844.
After escaping with her brothers on September 17th, 1849, and returning out of fear, Tubman decided to escape again in October 1849; — during what was becoming a very dangerous time in slavery. Nearly a year later on September 18th, 1850, The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was passed.
The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was one of the most controversial slave laws and elements of the 1850 Compromise. The legislation required that all escaped slaves captured be returned to their enslavers. Following the increased pressure from Southerners, all states were required to cooperate.
Enslavers anticipated the act would make the free states a more dangerous place for fugitive slaves to remain as well as igniting the fear of death in…
