March 10 - Harriet Tubman Day

Posted on March 10, 2021

Key Points

This is an update of my post published on March 10, 2010:

Harriet Tubman was strong, brave, and hard working on behalf of others, and this day commemorates her life; she was born into slavery some time in 1820 or 1821, and she died on March 10, 1913.

After Tubman escaped from slavery, traveling from Maryland to Pennsylvania, she made thirteen trips back to the south to rescue other enslaved people and bring them north to freedom on the Underground Railroad. Because of this, she has been called a conductor on the Underground Railroad and also the Moses of her people.

Tubman’s first rescue missions were to bring her family north to freedom. Eventually she guided other enslaved folks north, and she ended up escorting around 70 people to freedom as well as telling many others how to reach the northern states. She said later that she “never lost a passenger.”

Tubman proved her exceptional bravery because any runaway caught in the south would be returned to slavery, and she proved her exceptional strength because she had to withstand a terrible head wound as well as many beatings and other mistreatment. An overseer had thrown a two-pound metal weight at another slave, and it hit Tubman in the head. Just a teenager, bleeding and unconscious, Tubman was given no medical attention. Two days later, she was sent back into the fields. Tubman had problems from this head injury, including severe headaches and seizures, all her life.

During the Civil War, Tubman worked hard to defeat the Confederacy. She acted as a nurse to Union troops, helped enslaved people who took advantage of the war to run away, led bands of scouts to map out unfamiliar land, and acted as a spy for the Union. Tubman even led an armed assault, the first woman to do so in the Civil War, and more than 700 enslaved people were rescued during that raid.

After the Civil War and slavery were ended, Tubman tended to her family (including her aging parents) and also worked for women’s right to vote. She donated land to be used for a home for elderly people.

Harriet Tubman was widely known and greatly respected in her own time, but she was seldom paid for her nursing and spying services, invaluable though they were, and she was quite poor. One time that she received an honor, she had to sell a cow in order to afford the railroad ticket to go to the celebrations!

Luckily, some people who were busy heaping praise and honors on her also raised donations to partially pay her back for her service to her country. Unluckily, at one point two men swindled her in what sounds like an old-time version of the Nigerian e-mail scam.

All in all, Harriet Tubman had an eventful life, but never an easy one. Her strength and morality won for her fame but never fortune.

Harriet Tubman’s image will soon replace Andrew Jackson on U.S. 20-dollar bills – and she will be the first African American pictured on any U.S. money, as well as the first woman on paper currency in the nation in more than a century!

Here are some resources to learn more about Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad.

Here is a picture of Harriet Tubman that you can print and color.