*HARRIET TUBMAN-BLACK LIBERATION FIGHTER

Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for revolutionary abolitionist, Harriet Tubman.

COMMENTARY

FEBRUARY IS BLACK HISTORY MONTH. MARCH IS WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH.

The story of the ex-slave, Civil War ‘general’ and black liberation fighter Harriet Tubman is the stuff of legends. Although in recent decades she has received more of the proper attention due her the fight for the real freedom for blacks still is the wave of the future. Her early story, in any case, is the all to familiar slavery story of arbitrary beatings, random acts of senseless brutalization, separation from family and friends and the dreaded ‘sale’ further South that those like Ms. Tubman from border state slave society in Maryland feared above all. It was as a result of one such beating, leaving Ms. Tubman permanently injured, that she determined to in the late 1840’s to seek the “Northern Star” and escape.

If that was all to her story then she would not be different from the average one thousand or so slaves who escaped each year. But here is a woman with a difference agenda. After her escape she became a 'conductor' on the then bustling Underground Railroad, the route used by escaped slaves to head North to freedom. She repeatedly led, at great personal risk to her life, many slave freedom expeditions from the South. As she was able to brag later she did not lose one of her charges to the hands of the slave owners.

Another interesting part of her story is her relationship with the legendary revolutionary abolitionist John Brown. Apparently she was slated to join Brown at Harpers Ferry but illness forced her to fore go that fight. Given her talents in leading slaves from bondage, her authority among plantation blacks and her knowledge of the terrain and travel routes in the South she could have made Brown’s seemingly utopian plan for a slave insurrection and guerrilla warfare much more plausible. Needless to say she held the highest regard for this white man ready to lay down his head for black liberation. Toward the end of her life she named an indigent rest home she sponsored with her hard fought for government pension in his memory.

During the Civil War Ms. Tubman sought to aid the Union Armies as they made a beachhead in the South by acting as a scout and helping create a scouting unit made up of blacks that knew the area. She witnessed the brave fight of the Massachusetts 54th Regiment made up of Northern freeman at Fort Wagner and spent time under the command of the famous Kansas free state fighter Colonel James Montgomery, another intimate of John Brown’s. Although she was recognized for her services she had to endure many hassles in order to obtain the full pension that her service to the Union cause entitled her. She nevertheless spent most of her life in poverty and maintained herself with odd jobs and projects. The real honors that Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, John Brown, the men of the Massachusetts 54th and those countless black slaves and freedman who fought in the Union ranks still await them in a more just and honest society of the future.