Harriet Tubman

Welcome to the OK Let's Learn Podcast. This is two podcasts in one. One where we

dive into tons of different stories and books. And another where we just dive

into tons of different topics. My name is Kevin O'Keefe. So today OK let's learn

all about Harriet Tubman. One of the most courageous figures in American

history. She was born a slave, but she transformed her life into saving

slaves, rescuing slaves. And more than anybody else, she became this legendary

conductor of the underground railroad. She lived out her life helping the Union

win in the Civil War as a Union spy. And she spent the rest of her life

advocating for what was right in this country and shooting down what was

wrong. For African Americans, she was almost designated as the Moses of her

people. An amazing life. So let's get into it. Before we start, however, we

it's one thing to just bring this up so often with everything that I talk

about, anything that you ever read about what happened in the past, it's very

important to understand where the sources come from. In other words, who told

these stories? How do we know all of this is true? So very often, and this goes

back to a lot of my episodes on ancient Greek civilization, Alexander the

Great specifically, where the details of all of what he did in his life in some

cases weren't written down until a hundred years later. And even in other cases,

well, past when he lived. Well, Harriet Tubman did not write a autobiography

herself. Why? Well, she never learned to read and write. She was born into

slavery, like I mentioned, but her story was written down by people who knew

her and work with her. One of the earliest and most important sources is a

book called Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman that was written in 1869. Again,

think about this. This is during the time that she lived. It was written by Sarah

Hopkins Bradford. She was a writer who interviewed Harriet directly and recorded

all of her stories. Later, more biographies were written based on those

interviews, letters, and accounts from the people who helped rescue. And a lot

of biographies, this podcast is being released in 2026. A lot of biographies

that were written in the mid 2000s were based on documenting historical proof or

records that corroborated a lot of what she told in her stories in terms of who

her plantation owners were when they tried to sell or offer for sale her

brothers and her sisters. So we can be confident that although since these

stories were told by her over a long period of time, I think most of us know if

you you tell a story many years often it gets better and better as the years

go on. So sure, some of these stories could be embellished, but the basis of her

life and what she did as an American hero is solidified and true. We can be

confident of that. So early in her life, she was known as Minty. She was not

Harriet Tubman. Her birth name was Araminta Ross. She was born around 1822 and

again with a lot of things with slavery. There's no records. So you're just

basing it on, you know, your understanding of what you were told. Her mother was

Harriet Ritt Green, her father Ben Ross. They were both slaves. So again from my

younger members of the audience, if you were unlucky and you were born, you were

born to slave parents. You were automatically a slave as well. Her father worked

outdoors and she spent a lot of time with her father. She was short, but she was

strong. She really didn't like working inside in her earlier years. Listen to

this. 8.6, she took care of this baby of a plantation owner at 8.6 and she

literally could not sleep during the night because of the baby cried. It was her

responsibility and she would be punished if the baby made too much noise and

woke up the plantation owners. When she was 13, she went out into the swamps.

Where she grew up, this is important to know because of her ability to escape

slavery. She grew up in Maryland, which was a border state. Just north of

Maryland is that Mason Dixon line and once you cross that in the north, you were

free. At her time that she lived, this was really important for her, like I said,

and we'll get to all this, to save and rescue so many slaves and get them north.

It wasn't like traveling all the way from the deep south up north. That was

almost impossible during these early years. But what did she have to do? Listen to

this. She lived in Dorchester County, Maryland. You go down there now and you'll

see that this area is nothing but marshes and woodlands and swamps and low

line water and it's not a fun place to be. Yet she had to go out into these

marshes to check muskrat traps. These muskrats are a little small like beaver

like animals and people trap them further fur. Imagine that. A young girl alone

in the cold muddy swans checking these traps. Oh my goodness, you talk about making

yourself tough, independent, fearless at an early age. I mentioned about the

babies she needed to protect. At age 13, her life dramatically changed in a

horrible way. One day she was in a general store. There was this slave who tried

to escape. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time but really was she? No

she wasn't. She actually stood there in the doorway as he runs out of this

store and she refused to move out of the way. She did overseer demanded. Minty,

stop them, stop them. She didn't. She refused. In the panic of trying to catch

this slave who was on the run, the guy picked up a heavy iron way two pounds.

Really, it's almost like this huge hockey puck and through it, he was trying to

hit the guy escaping but it missed. It hit Minty right in the head. She had a

scar for the rest of her life but her scar was more permanent because she ended

up suffering seizures, these sleep spells, a form of like epilepsy for the rest of her life.

But here is where she really, her life changed because in her telling of it,

it was almost as if these messages, this sleeplessness that she didn't have any more at night

because of these seizures as we later learned, maybe it was some type of

narcolepsy, basically sleeping fits. She believed that it was almost like a vision from God

that said to her, she needed to change her life and help others.

And this is what she did for the rest of her life. At around the age of 24, she got married

and this was late for this time. She never had children. Her, listen to this,

her husband. His name was John Tubman and by the way, obviously this is how she became known as

Harriet Tubman. She was minty at first but she took the first name Harriet's after her mother

but this is the fascinating part. Her husband was a free man. She lived with her husband.

He was here in Maryland free but she was still a slave. It wasn't like you marry a free man

and then you're free. No, she woke up every morning, she had to return to her plantation as a slave.

In this, obviously, graded on her, she saw how freedom could change your life, of course.

And just to back up in terms of her history, she was one of nine children.

And three of her sisters, Lena, Saf and Mariah Ritty, they were sold and taken away from her family

and sent down to deep south, down in Georgia. She never saw them again. And again, you talk about

how that so many events in her life willed her to make sure that she could help others as she

got older. And she did take advantage of this. Her plantation owner and the person that sold

and broke up her family was Edward Brodus. She first tried to escape on the night of September,

17th, 1849. She left with her two brothers. She went out. They were deep away from the plantation

in the marshes, in the swamps, and her brothers got scared. They didn't want to go and continue.

They went back. So Harriet went back as well. Not long after that, she made the decision that she

was leave and she did. Just about a month later, October, late October, 1849. In the middle of the night,

she slips out of her bedroom, her husband's sleeping, and she made it to freedom. She went and

escaped alone. How did she do it? She followed the North Star. She later said, quote, I had reasoned

this out of my mind. I had a right to liberty or death. Unquote. Where did she settle? In Philadelphia,

the city of brotherly love. Really on in this time period, Philadelphia had so many free African

Americans. And she got together with a lot of abolitionists. I mentioned this in my previous

episode about the run up to the Civil War. Abolitionists were people that were against the institution

of slavery and fought to end it. They got together and they organized through this underground railroad,

again, for my younger members of the audience, not literally a railroad, not underground. It was a

secret way to escape the South through these stations, homes, buildings, barns that would hide

people and then covertly would tell them where to go next, constantly looking for that North Star.

And as slaves would tell the stories and they would give directions. Remember, the only way that they

could move was moving at night and sometimes they would have to sleep and bushes or almost

underwater, their whole body underwater. And where's the North Star? Well, it's the brightest

star in the sky, but as they explained, do you see that which we know today is that big

deeper, right? That group of stars up there kind of looks like a ladle where you might use to

scoop water from a bucket. Well, that handle that big deeper. Where does it point? It points

towards the brightest star in the sky. And they used to call this big deeper, this drinking

gourd. So how did she escape through this network of people that were braved and risked their

own life and risked their own property? Because if these people were found to be helping escape slaves,

forget it. They would be history themselves. Their freedom would be compromised.

But here's what she ended up doing. She convinced the fellow abolitionists that she wanted to go

back and help people who were slaves to escape themselves, just like people had helped her on this

underground railroad. So she became a conductor of the underground railroad herself. But her first

trip down South, her first introduction to helping people escape, was to rescue her niece,

who was about to be sold. She found out about this and she headed down and her first taste

of saving people succeeded. So she wanted to go down a third time. Why to go back for her husband?

She got back to the house where she lived with her husband and think about this.

She is going there to convince him, even though he's free, to come north.

What life is all about? How much better it was in Philadelphia? She steps into the room as the story

goes. Seize her husband and he says no. He shakes his head. Why? Because in the next moment, a woman

arrives at his side. He remarried. It was his new wife. She was heartbroken. She was devastated.

But she went back and she still returned to the South. It is said over a period of 11 years,

who knows to what extent this can be verified or not. But it's said that she rescued and helped

300 slaves go to freedom in the north over a period of 11 years. Amazing. Now you may be thinking

with all this danger, word got out about her in the South. She was wanted. Why was she never captured?

Well, like I said, they traveled at night. They changed their roots often. She used disguises very

often because of her small appearance and stature and how strong she was. She dressed up as if she was

a man. And she trusted people. She ended up having a lot of people that were on her side,

knew her, protected her. And of course, she understood that area where she had grown up better than most

people, right? Even if you were a, they called them catchers, the people they were out to find

escape slaves. They didn't venture off the plantations very often, but she knew the back roads.

She knew the swamps and the trails. So that's why she was so often helpful. Later in her life,

as the story goes, what ended up happening shortly after she escaped? And this was key in a timing.

1850, there was this fugitive slave act that was a law that if you found an escape slave in the

north, you had to return them to the South. This was one of the lead ups. As I talked about in my

previous episode, a huge factor that started the Civil War. And here she was visiting family up

in Troy, New York, upstate, New York, April 27th, 1860. It was this gentleman by the name of Charles

Null. He was captured. He was being held. And sure enough, she disguises herself dressed up as an

older woman. As he's coming out of the courthouse, as the story goes, she ends up tackling one of the

police officers. And then with supporters, other abolitionists holding, holding the police

officers down, he escapes with a boat waiting at the side of the river. He escapes across the river

and ultimately through a series of events, he ends up getting back his freedom. But another example

of her unbelievable life, legendary, to the point where it's so unbelievable, is it believable?

Yes, this has all been documented. To what extent, how it happened in that courthouse and how

it was that it was organized, that they were going to be saving this gentleman, but sure enough,

they did. And she was part of it. She helped organize it. This was Harriet Tubman.

As she lived out her life during the Civil War, she became a spy for the Union Army. And as,

again, it was told, she led a group of soldiers on a reconnaissance mission to look for minds that

were set in this river that she ended up knowing. She became the first woman to lead men in battling

the history of our United States. Talk about legendary. Now, just to wrap up the podcast,

you're probably thinking, how could someone that is born into a situation that is not a verchusing,

but yet so many people went along to get along? How is it that she decided she's going to go out

and change the world? Do something that was so beyond what most people did? It came from her mother.

There was this moment when she was little Minty that she saw something that she never forgot. Her

mother, Ritt, stood inside her small cabin. You see, the word was out that her son, after Minty's

mom's daughters were sold away in slavery. The word was getting around that someone wanted to

purchase her son. Take her son away. He was going to be sold. This was a reality. Families were

torn apart, but Ritt, Minty's mom, Harriet's mom refused to allow it happen. She stood in front

of the doorway as the plantation owner came to take away her son. She planted her feet and she

said in her booming voice that Harriet never forgot. You are not taking my son. The men threatened

her. They warned her. They tried to get her out of the way. They forcefully tried to get in

and take her son, but Harriet's mom refused to move. She stood there, ready to fight, ready to

protect her child no matter what. What happened? She stood her ground in the plantation owner,

walked away. The gentleman, the other plantation owner said it's not worth it. They left.

Young Minty, young Harriet Tubman never forgot this and it changed her life and because of this,

it changed so many lives of those who were born into slavery and were able to get their freedom

because of this wonderful woman. Friends, thanks for taking this journey with me on the OK Let's

Learn Podcast. Reach out to me at KVMOK21 at gmail.com. We have a Facebook group. OK, let's learn. We

are on YouTube. Subscribe to YouTube. Hit that bell. You'll get notifications for every new episode.

So until next time, have fun and keep learning.