Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Harriet Tubman: There and Back Again

Here are some facts about the extraordinary Harriet Tubman, a fellow Marylander.
Many slaves had never ventured far from their owners’ property. Slave owners deliberately kept them close so they wouldn’t know how to escape. As a result, runaways needed Tubman to do the navigating. She led groups along dirt roads and paths by night. If no safe house was available during the day, Tubman hid her passengers in dense forests, swamps, or other places no one would think to look. When it was safer to split up—a decision she sometimes made when she knew the group was being hunted—Tubman gave simple, easy-to-follow advice for reaching a meeting point, like “follow the drinking gourd” (the Big Dipper, which points north). (Read more.)
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