Harriet Tubman is a towering figure in American history — but you might not even know how much she truly accomplished.
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00:00During the 1820s when Harriet Tubman was born, slavery was actually expanding in the United
00:16States due to the invention of the cotton gin in the 1790s.
00:21Cotton was really on the rise as a critical crop, tobacco was on the decline, and what
00:27that meant is that there were surplus slaves in Maryland which made families vulnerable
00:32to sale and fracture, and that's something that Harriet Tubman experienced in her young
00:36life.
00:41When Harriet was a very young child, Harriet, her siblings, and her mother were actually
00:47separated from her father.
00:49They're able to retain ties as best they can, but families during this time period, it's
00:53incredibly difficult, and most enslaved people in their lifetime would lose a close family
00:58member due to sale, somebody being sold away, so it's incredibly difficult for black families.
01:15She's able to work, she's able to do arduous work, but she also for the rest of her life
01:21suffers debilitating headaches, seizures, she will fall asleep at a moment's notice,
01:27and some scholars speculate that she suffered a form of epilepsy due to this grave head
01:33wound.
01:53The Underground Railroad was a network of activists who had safe houses, who acted as
01:57conductors to help guide enslaved people to freedom.
02:02Through those connections, through her work, through her marriage, through moving about
02:05and having somewhat atypical level of mobility for an enslaved woman, it's likely that she
02:09might have found out about the Underground Railroad that way.
02:22The very first trip that she makes back to Maryland in late 1849 is to rescue her niece
02:30and her niece's two children, and she did so with the aid of her niece's husband, who
02:35was also a free man.
02:37And so initially she goes back to help liberate family members, but then by the mid-1850s,
02:43she's really operating as a full-fledged conductor on the Underground Railroad in terms of leading
02:48people to safety.
03:05When the war breaks out, she does something that a number of black women do.
03:10She provides assistance to the Union forces by nursing wounded soldiers, but she does
03:16more than that.
03:17She acts as a spy for the Union in terms of going into Confederate territory.
03:22She knows it well.
03:23She can navigate it.
03:30She accompanies Colonel James Montgomery on an expedition along the Combahee River in
03:36South Carolina, and that Combahee Raid leads to the liberation of at least 700 enslaved
03:44people.
03:45Some historians estimate as high as 800.
03:47But this is a massive achievement for this woman in terms of providing assistance to
03:53the Union Army.
04:08She has a legacy not only in terms of the freedom of enslaved people, not only in terms
04:15of African-descended communities in the United States, but for reform more generally, for
04:20women's rights, and she stands as a symbol of liberty in so many ways, of democracy in
04:29so many ways, in terms of really sort of taking it upon herself to effect change.