Born: ca. 1820, Dorchester County, MD

Education: Nonliterate

Died: March 10, 1913, Auburn, NY

Resisting an overseer at a young age, Tubman incurred a head blow that left her a lifelong epileptic. She still toiled in the fields and continued to resist. Hearing that she and other slaves would be sold in 1849, she ran away, reached Pennsylvania, and worked as a domestic in Philadelphia.

Between 1830 and 1860 alone more than 9,000 fugitive slaves passed through that city and its abolitionist Vigilance Committee, directed by black author William Still, helped sustain their Underground Railroad. Tubman became a legendary figure in the underground, leading nineteen rescue trips into the South from 1850 to 1860. Armed and using creative methods, such as singing “Steal away” to begin an escape, she liberated 300 bondmen and women, including her parents.

Black and white abolitionists alike honored Tubman as “the Moses of her people.” She befriended the radical John Brown and mourned his execution for insurrection (1859). In 1862 she served as a spy, scout, and nurse for the Union Army in South Carolina. During the postwar decades she cared for the disadvantaged, converting her own residence into a Home for Indigent and Aged Negroes. Also a women's rights advocate, she cofounded the National Association of Colored Women in 1896.