Aria Springfield, museum educator at the National Constitution Center, talks about one of the exhibits honoring abolitionist Harriet Tubman. — TRIBUNE PHOTO / ABDUL SULAYMAN
By Sherry Stone TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
The phenomenal courage of one Black woman who led slaves to freedom will be honored across the nation Monday on National Harriet Tubman Day.
Established by U.S. Congress in 1990, the day memorializes the life of the Underground Railroad conductor, who first gained her own freedom, in Philadelphia. The day also commemorates the day of her death, March 10, 1913, in Auburn, New York.
The National Constitution Center at 524 Arch St. is honoring Tubman through the “The Four Harriets Exhibit.”
“She [Tubman] was nicknamed “Minty” because her birth name was Araminta,” said Aria Springfield, museum educator at the National Constitution Center. “She took the name Harriet to honor her mother (Harriet Green) after she got married to John Tubman and later to Nelson Davis. So Harriet Tubman, of course utilized the Underground Railroad, which was an extensive sort of system of pathways that enslaved individuals would take to emancipate themselves.”
The “Moses” of the Underground Railroad, as she came to be called, made 19 journeys in all. She made 11 trips from Maryland, to Ontario, Canada, to guide slaves to freedom between the years 1850-1860, and guided her own parents, Rit and Ben, to freedom, along the way.
A bounty worth $1,573,056.41 by today’s dollars, $40,000 at the time, was placed upon her head by slaveholders who were livid over slaves who followed the “Freedom Conductor” in the middle of the night from their plantations.
Tubman once boasted, “I never ran my train off the tracks — and I never lost a spy.”
Brian Krisch, of the Constitution Center, said the Harriet Tubman exhibit grew out of the museum’s Civil War and Reconstruction Era exhibits.
The “Four Harriets of History” Exhibit, including a tribute to the famous conductor of the Underground Railroad, is open Wednesdays through Sundays this month. Shows begin at 10:45 a.m. and 1:45 p.m.
“We wanted to develop programming that would accompany the content in that gallery,” Krisch said. “But besides supplementing it, we wanted to be able to tell stories that aren’t always covered just through the lens.”
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