Harriet Tubman & Sojourner Truth
Renowned abolitionists also served as nurses in the Civil War
Renowned for their abolition efforts, less known is that Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth both cared for Black soldiers during the Civil War. Like other former slaves serving in the war who lacked an opportunity to have gained a formal nursing education or license, their pay as nurses was withheld from the Union military until an (actual) act of Congress created acknowledgement of their service deacdes later.
Harriet Tubman acquired knowledge of nursing and natural remedies for treating fevers and smallpox from her mother, as well as knowledge she acquired from her work in the Underground Railroad. Despite her war service, it ultimately took over 20 years for her to receive a nurse’s military pension for her work during the war. Following formal emancipation she was later appointed matron of a Colored Hospital in Virginia and also opened The Harriet Tubman Home for the Elderly in 1908 in upstate New York.
Sojourner Truth served as a nurse to the Dumont Family, prior to escaping slavery in 1826. This experience, among others, provided skills she would later use while working as a nurse for Black soldiers in the Civil War. In 1850 (through dictation since she received no formal education) she published The Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave. During Reconstruction she worked as a nurse and counselor with the National Freedman’s Relief Association where she worked to provide more sanitary conditions at the Freedman’s Hospital. She also came before both Congress and President Abraham Lincoln to, among other requests, advocate for nursing education and training for newly freed slaves.
Sources
Information for the above biography was sourced for Harriet Tubman from University of Virginia School of Nursing , the American Battlefield Trust, and the Journal of Holistic Nursing Practice; and for Sojourner Truth from American Association of Colleges of Nursing, Biography, and Galen College of Nursing. Additional information was also sourced from the book The Paths We Tread: Blacks in Nursing Worldwide 1854–1994 by M. Elizabeth Carnegie.
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