AUBURN — Harriet Tubman was born enslaved. She was never able to learn how to read or write. She was beaten as a child by a mistress who slept with a whip under her pillow.

And as an Underground Railroad conductor, she moved during the night while saving dozens of people who were enslaved.

Tubman, known as “the Moses of her people,” was born into slavery in Maryland in the early 1800s. She escaped and moved to Auburn, and she led roughly a dozen expeditions into the South, freeing hundreds of slaves. At the Harriet Tubman Home in Auburn, Tubman and the Underground Railroad come to life.

With February marking Black History Month, the home offers a way in which visitors can honor the legacy she left behind in the greater Syracuse area.

“Let’s go inside,” said Harriet Tubman Home tour coordinator, Christine Carter, on a recent afternoon. “These are the grounds Harriet helped many people to freedom and good health.”

Tubman lived in Auburn until her death in 1913. After she led people who were enslaved to freedom, she opened a home for people who were elderly, sick or living with financial concerns, Carter said. She risked her life and others before settling in Auburn in 1859, when central New York became a center for progressive thought, abolition and women’s suffrage.

Tubman, born into slavery in Maryland in 1822, led around a dozen expeditions through the Underground Railroad into the South. She is estimated to have freed hundreds of slaves before opening a home for people who were elderly, sick or living with financial concerns. Matthew Gutierrez | Senior Staff Writer

Tours of the property, about a 40-minute drive from Syracuse University, give visitors an intimate walk through her life. The tours last an hour and begin with her life story, before a walk on the property. During three separate tours recently, guides carefully crafted her story, including key details in her life. They said she was not a “slave.” Rather, she was enslaved. They said what was “done to her,” not what “she is,” to fully showcase her plight.

Herbert Ruffin II, an associate professor of African American history and chair of the African American Studies department at SU, led several trips to Tubman’s home for his students. He wanted the visits to complement his course readings and discussions with a “3D layer” to the class. Last fall, he brought his students to the play “Possessing Harriet” at Syracuse Stage.

“The message with Harriet is that across humanity, people have gone through traumatic situations. Some continued to be themselves and stay really strong,” Ruffin said. “Harriet got hit in the head at a young age, causing occasional blackouts. She persevered. She was an iconic freedom fighter.”

Syracuse’s ties to Tubman are numerous. Not only did she live near SU for decades, but there’s a picture and quotation of hers in Sims Hall, where the African American Studies department resides. Douglas V. Armstrong, professor and chair of anthropology at SU, has been in involved in a series of surveys and excavations aimed at gaining a better understanding of Tubman and the Home for Aging African Americans. He’s taken SU students to digs at the property, as well.

To begin tours in Auburn, visitors learn about Tubman’s life. By the age of six, she was separated from her mother when she was rented out to take care of children and to work in the fields and the forest. Guides explain that, at age 12, Tubman intervened to keep her master from beating an enslaved man who tried to escape. She was the first African American woman to serve in the military.

Susie Teuscher | Digital Design Editor

“Harriet lived a beautiful life in central New York,” said Rev. Paul Carter, a tour guide. “She was one of the greatest people to have lived.”

In the Civil War, as a Union spy and scout, she wandered the streets under Confederate control and learned from their enslaved population what their troop placements were. She helped many troops find food, shelter and jobs in the North. She gave herbal remedies to black and white soldiers dying from infection and disease.

“The Syracuse area was at the center of abolition,” Ruffin said. “Slave catchers dared not come here. We need places like the Tubman home, where people can get a sense of what happened and have a cultural understanding.”

Among her lasting lines were those centering on liberty and justice for all people, including people of color and women.

“I started with this idea in my head, there’s two things I’ve got a right to, and these are, Death or Liberty,” Tubman once said. “One or the other I mean to have.”  

Published on February 3, 2019 at 11:33 pm

Contact Matthew: mguti100@syr.edu | @MatthewGut21