As many know Black History Month was created to focus attention on the contributions of African Americans to the United States. In honor of Harriet Tubman’s contributions, African Americans fight for freedom and many other Civil Rights heroes . 

Harriet Tubman born as Araminta Ross in March 1822. Was an American abolitionist and political activist. Born into slavery, Tubman escaped and subsequently made 13 missions to rescue approximately 70 enslaved people, including family and friends,using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad. During the American Civil War, she served as an armed scout and spy for the Union Army. In her later years, Tubman was an activist in the movement for women’s suffrage. 

In her early years, Harriet Tubman was a slave in Dorchester County, Maryland. Harriet Tubman was beaten and whipped at a young age since she was born into slavery. Early in life Harriet Tubman suffered a head injury due to an irate overseer throwing a metal weight intending to hit another slave. Due to the injury it caused dizziness, pain, and spells of hypersomnia. Where she began experiencing premonitions from God.

In 1849 Harriet Tubman escaped to Philadelphia then returned to Maryland to rescue her family from slavery. She began with one group of relatives at a time but slowly began rescuing dozens of other enslaved people. She began being called as Moses by slave buyers after she began freeing slaves but they never saw her face beginning to think she was a man. She traveled at night in extreme secrecy and never lost a passenger. 

In 1850 after the Fugitive Slave Act was passed she helped guide escapees farther north into British North America in Canada she even helped newly freed people find jobs in their new homes. Harriet Tubman met John Brown in 1858 and she helped make a plan and recruit supporters for his raid in 1859 in Harpers Ferry. 

When the Civil War began, Tubman worked for the Union Army, first as a cook and nurse, and then as an armed scout and spy. For her guidance of the raid at Combahee Ferry, which liberated more than 700 enslaved people. 

By 1911, Tubman’s body was so frail that she was admitted into the rest home named in her honor. A New York newspaper described her as “ill and penniless”, prompting supporters to offer a new round of donations. Surrounded by friends and family members, she died of pneumonia on March 10, 1913. Just before she died, she quoted the Gospel of John to those in the room: “I go away to prepare a place for you.” Tubman was buried with semi-military honors at Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn.