Resources
- Harriet Tubman: American Battlefield TrustPerhaps one of the best known personalities of the Civil War, Harriet Tubman was born into slavery as Araminta Ross, on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, sometime in 1820 or 1821. As a child, Tubman was “hired out” to various masters who proved to be particularly cruel and abusive to her. As a result of a head injury caused by one of these men, she suffered from seizures and “visions” for the rest of her life, which she believed were sent from God.
- Harriet Tubman: HistoryHarriet Tubman was an escaped enslaved woman who became a “conductor” on the Underground Railroad, leading enslaved people to freedom before the Civil War, all while carrying a bounty on her head. But she was also a nurse, a Union spy and a women’s suffrage supporter.
- Harriet Tubman: National Women's History MuseumNational Women's History Museum information on Harriet Tubman.
Research & Reference
- Harriet Tubman: Credo ReferenceA Credo Reference landing page on Harriet Tubman. This page includes links to reference works, journal articles, and a mind map.
A Woman Called Moses: The Life of Harriet Tubman
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This program is a freely based scripted account of the life of Harriet Tubman, an escaped slave and participant of the Underground Railroad. Emmy Award winner and Academy Award nominee Cicely Tyson portrays the African American abolitionist who returned to the South several times and led hundreds of slaves to freedom before the Civil War. Tubman has become an iconic symbol for the fight against oppression.
Source: Films on Demand
Perspectives
Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom
Every schoolchild knows of Harriet Tubman's heroic escape and resistance to slavery.But few readers are aware that Tubman went on to be a scout, a spy, and a nurse for the Union Army, because there has never before been a serious biography for an adult audience of this important woman.This is that long overdue historical work, written by an acclaimed historian of the antebellum era and the Civil War. Illiterate but deeply religious, Tubman left her family in her early 20s to escape to Philadelphia, then a hotbed of abolitionism.There she became the first and only woman, fugitive slave, and black to work as a conductor on the Underground Railroad. So successful was she in spiriting away slaves that the state of Maryland put a $40,000 bounty on her head.Within a year of starting her work, fellow slaves and Northerners began referring to Tubman as 'Moses' because of how many people she had freed. With impeccable scholarship that draws on newly available sources and research into the daily lives of slaves, HARRIET TUBMAN is an enduring work on one of the most important figures in American history.
Harriet Tubman: A Biography
This concise biography of Harriet Tubman, the African American abolitionist, explores her various roles as an Underground Railroad conductor, Civil War scout and nurse, and women's rights advocate. * Maps and detailed descriptions of the major Underground Railroad routes Tubman used in guiding fugitives to freedom * 24 primary source excerpts from newspapers, contemporary correspondence, and Tubman's military records * 13 photographs
Harriet Tubman and the Fight for Freedom
Combining biography with the larger history of slavery, the antislavery movement, the Underground Railroad, the increasing sectionalism of the pre-Civil War era, as well as the war and post-war Reconstruction, Harriet Tubman and the Fight for Freedom uses a variety of documents to trace the legendary life of Harriet Tubman.
Moses
In lyrical text, Carol Boston Weatherford describes Harriet Tubman's spiritual journey as she hears the voice of God guiding her North to freedom on that very first trip to escape the brutal practice of forced servitude. Tubman, courageous and compassionate, and deeply religious, would take 19 subsequent trips back South, never being caught, but none as profound as this first. Harriet Tubman's bravery and relentless pursuit of freedom are a testament to the resilience of the human spirit.
Harriet Beecher Stowe and Harriet Tubman
Uncle Tom's Cabin was a blockbuster novel that depicted the flight to freedom. Consider this depiction from two very different vantages: the world of the author, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and the life of Harriet Tubman, who was at the center of immediate and decisive steps being taken by enslaved people.
Source: Kanopy