"HARRIET TUBMAN"

 “HARRIET TUBMAN”

In finishing up this Veterans Day weekend, I want to remember Harriet Tubman as one of most distinguished yet least recognized veterans.  She was a Union spy during the Civil War and led the Union Army in a raid of the Combahee Ferry in South Carolina in 1863, freeing more than 700 people who were enslaved. She had put out the word to those who were enslaved that a raid was coming, letting the people know to be ready.  She gave the signal, and hundreds of enslaved people came out of the woods to the waiting Union Army in boats.  When the Confederate army chased the enslaved people, there were greeted with hundreds of Union soldiers, some of whom were Black.  The Confederate soldiers shrank back into the woods.

Tubman worked for years to get her pension as a soldier in the Union Army, finally receiving $20 per month in 1899.  This past summer we started our human rights tour in Auburn, New York, where Tubman established her home with assistance from Martha Wright Coffman (sister of Lucretia Mott) and Frances Miller Seward.  Her home served as a base for people escaping slavery, on their way to Canada.  She also brought her parents and much of her family up out of slavery to Auburn and on to Canada.  We were grateful to see the land and geography where she did her work against slavery, work for rights for women, and work for establishing a home for aged people on her property in Auburn. 

Through our daughter Susan’s locations in Westfield, New York and in Baltimore, we have been blessed to touch and be nurtured by the witness of Harriet Tubman.  We have visited her birthing grounds on the eastern shore of Maryland, a place where she learned the ins and outs of the countryside, so that she could become comfortable enough to make the many raids that she made by herself to free people who were enslaved in the South.  She began that career early on, when she prevented a slaveholder from catching a person running away from being punished.  She herself was punished for that deed by receiving a hard blow to her head, which almost killed her.  Even that, however, led to grace for her.  It led to visions from God for Tubman, visions telling her to seek freedom for herself and for many others.  It began a pattern of mysticism for Tubman, in which she always consulted God before going on a trip South and also in the middle of trips where she was confused or trapped.

We also visited her home and her church in St. Catherine’s, Canada, on one of our trips with Susan to Niagara Falls.  Then, finally this summer we were able to visit her American home in Auburn, a home centered in justice, compassion and fire.  Her home for aged people has been restored, and there is work being done by the AME Zion church to restore Tubman’s personal home.  We were grateful to have a passionate AME Zion pastor and his spouse as our guides on the Harriet Tubman grounds.  I learned there that Harriet Tubman and Ida B. Wells met at the National Association for Colored Women in DC in 1896 – talking about intersectionality – wow!  Tubman lived a simple life, but her life was rich and complex.  We were also privileged to visit her grave in the Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn, and we brought home pine cones from her grave.  

Harriet Tubman was a veteran who did not sit around talking about the past and what she had done way back when.  She kept her fires for justice burning, and she kept walking and working so that all might know the power of the idea that all people are created with equal dignity before God.