stfuracists:

STFU RACISTS CELEBRATES BLACK HISTORY MONTH

I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.
Harriet Tubman

Araminta “Minty” Ross, daughter of Ben and Harriet, was born a slave in Maryland in the early 1820s. The Brodess family were the masters of Minty and her family, and Minty saw her sisters sold away to other owners, though Minty’s mother threatened to split anyone’s head open if they tried to sell away Minty’s brother Moses. After Mr. Brodess’ death, and Mrs. Brodess’ remarriage to Anthony Thompson, Minty and her family were overseen by Mrs. Brodess’ son Edward, and Minty’s father was overseen by Mr. Thompson.

Minty was often lent out to other families and suffered not only from homesickness, but frequent illnesses and severe whippings. During her travels one day, she crossed paths with an enraged slavemaster and his escaped slave. The white man asked Minty to restrain the slave, but she refused. The white man threw a weight intending to hit his slave, but it hit Minty in the head. She suffered from seizures and headaches for the rest of her life. The head trauma invoked vivid dreams and hallucinations, which she attributed to God talking to her.

Minty’s father Ben was freed, as dictated by a deceased previous owner’s will, at age 45. Later in life, Minty investigated the legality of her family’s slave status, and found that her mother was supposed to be free after turning 45, and any children born after the parents turned 45 were also supposed to be considered free. In her mid-20s, Minty married John Tubman, a free black man, putting her and any future children’s status in even more question. She grew ill again, and Edward Brodess was working on selling her when he suddenly died. Despite the threat of the Ross family being broken up and sold to different owners, John did not want to move North, where his wife would be free.

At this point, Minty decided to use her mother’s first name instead of her own, and took on John’s surname. So in 1849, after a failed escaped with her two brothers (who had second thoughts and turned themselves and their reluctant sister in), the woman now known as “Harriet Tubman” left her husband (who threatened to turn her in) and escaped slavery, traveling through woods and marshes, and making use of a network of abolitionists and free blacks (including former slaves) known as The Underground Railroad.

She evaded slave catchers, who made their living tracking fugitive slaves, and arrived safely in Philadelphia in 1850, where she joined The Underground Railroad as a Conductor, sworn to an oath of silence. She was given the nickname “Moses,” and for the next several years, aided slaves in escaping from the South to the North, including her parents, brothers, sisters-in-law, and nieces and nephews. Harriet tried to rescue her estranged husband, but he had taken a new wife, raising a new family until his murder by a white man years later.

Harriet was good friends with John Brown, who called her “General Tubman,” and she was involved in the plot to steal arms from Harper’s Ferry. There are questions as to her lack of involvement on the day of the raid - she may have been ill, working on a mission for the Underground Railroad, or even avoiding it altogether, having decided (along with her and Brown’s mutual friend Frederick Douglass) that Brown’s plan was unviable. They spoke well of each other in life, and Harriet spoke well of Brown after his execution.

The end of Harriet’s stint with the Underground Railroad coincided with Lincoln’s election as President, the secession of the South, and the start of the Civil War. She was living in Canada, but returned to the States to serve as a Union army nurse, taking care of starved, injured, recently freed blacks as the Union advanced into Southern territory. Shortly after the Emancipation Proclamation, Harriet became the ringleader of a network of Union spies, with the purpose of freeing slaves and recruiting them for the Union army. Her most high profile mission was a raid along the Combahee River, which freed hundreds of slaves, and where Harriet was the first woman to lead an armed assault in the Civil War.

After the conclusion of the war and the surrender of the Confederacy, Harriet filed with the government for compensation for her services - they refused to reimburse her. On her way to Auburn, New York to take care of her parents in their home, she was assaulted by a train conductor and passengers after refusing to move to a smoking car. Years later, hard up for money, she was the victim of a cash-for-gold swindle, borrowing two grand from a friend and meeting with two men who claimed to have a $5,000 gold cache. They assaulted and chloroformed her, bound and gagged her, and took the money.

Despite her fame and being celebrated in popular biographies that were published after the Civil War, Harriet continued to struggle financially. Receiving little compensation for her humanitarian work, and no compensation for her government work, Harriet took in boarders to her and her parents’ home to help stay afloat. One of them was a black Union veteran and bricklayer named Nelson Davis. Harriet and Nelson fell for each other, marrying in 1869, adopting a baby daughter and staying together until Nelson’s death in 1888. (Nelson was 22 years younger, making Harriet one of the first cougars in American history).

Harriet campaigned for women’s suffrage into the 20th century, was finally compensated by the government in 1899, and became involved with the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. She deeded 25 acres to the church for the Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged, though she fought with the church when they tried to charge residents $100 for entry- she meant for the home to house people without money.

One of her final acts of badassery before her death from pneumonia in 1913 was a surgery in the late 1890s. Still feeling the effects of her lifelong head trauma, Harriet had a doctor saw open her skull and adjust her brain.

Let me put that out there again.

Sawed-open skull. No anasthesia. Biting a bullet, like the soldiers she’d seen have limbs amputated during the Civil War.

Araminta Ross. aka Minty. aka Moses. aka Harriet Tubman. aka General Tubman. Fugitive slave. Underground Railroad Conductor. Abolitionist. Suffragist. Spy. Cougar. Fucking tougher than you. My hero.