Harriet Tubman
One of the Greatest Black Leaders of Our Time!
To all my brothers in Swahili (Udugu) and Sisters (Da Da) Of all colors and backgrounds. I’m back at it once more kicking in the door and hope all of you can learn and enjoy it as I bring it to you hardcore. Like any true freedom fighter’s street soldiers and conscious-minded connoisseurs and your bougie ass people too. I know you’ve been waiting for some more as I take you there massing it down to the floorboards.
“..and I prayed to God to make me strong and able to fight, and that’s what I’ve always prayed for ever since.”
Tubman to Ednah Dow Cheney, SC, 1865
All are welcome on this short literary tour. I have to give a shout-out like I always do to my blog homeys, Blog Divas, and mad propers to all my megalomaniacs from around the globe that are out of control. Now, this is women’s history month which all men should be down with because where I come from a strong Black woman named Catherine Williams who took no shit off nobody is the only reason I am doing my thing today.
On this blog I am going to drop on you as one of the greatest black leaders ever known on the planet you know her as Harriet Tubman. She was born with the name Araminta Ross and she was one of the strongest black women you would ever know about. She was born into slavery. She became one f the icon of the woman’s movement and the ultimate symbol of courage and freedom of all black and white people here in America to this very day. Your dusty ass history books did not tell you everything you should know about this woman. She only stood 5 foot tall but she was a giant among us all.
Araminta Ross aka Harriet Tubman was born March 1822 in Dorchester County Maryland. Why is her birthday not a national holiday or something y’all? All my real street soldiers can you answer that question real quick for me? She was the conductor of what we know as the underground railroad freeing slaves. The underground railroad was a well-organized system of free and enslaved Black and white abolitionists and activists. She said out her own mouth- I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger. She made some of 13 missions and freed 70 enslaved people including family and friends.
I had crossed the line. I was free; but there was no one to welcome me to the land of freedom. I was a stranger in a strange land; and my home after all, was down in Maryland; because my father, my mother, my brothers, and sisters, and friends were there. But I was free, and they should be free.
Harriet Tubman, Scenes in the Life of Harriet Tubman By Sarah Hopkins Bradford
What your so-called history books in school did not tell you is they called her Moses because she rejected the new testament of the Bible. The White slave owners had put in the new testament to be submissive to your master. As you already know Harriet Tubman was not going for that bullshit. Her slave master name Edward Brodess tried to sell her Harriet Tubman angry at him; she prayed for him to change his mind. The slave master brought someone to the house to look at her to be sold. Then she changed her prayer to, “Oh Lord, if you ain’t never changing that man’s heart, kill him, Lord and take him out of the way.” A week later Brodess died.
Now it was well knownfact she was beat so much from a couple of her slave masters and an injury to her head she got dizzy spells. Harriet learned to play that to her advantage telling people she was talking to the lord. With her never getting caught she must have had a higher power helping her along the way. In 1849 Harriet Tubman escaped to Philadelphia only to return to Maryland getting her two brothers and their wives and children. Despite what you see on some of these corny-ass movies and TV shows Harriet Tubman carried a revolver, and she was good with a rifle. and an ax. She was exceptionally good with all of them. Plus, she was not afraid to use them her father showed her how to shoot and how to use an ax because he was a timberman. So, you can read between the lines here she would shoot any slave catchers and their dogs if they were in her path to freedom.
Harriet also purportedly threatened to shoot any escaped slave who tried to turn back on the journey since that would threaten the safety of the remaining group. Harriet Tubman said, “one time a man said he was going back to the plantation.”
She pointed her gun to his head and yelled; you go on or die!” Several days later, he was with the group as they entered Canada as free human beings. She did this for over 11 years she said she did all the journeys to freedom in the wintertime when most people stayed indoors at night. Escaping to Philadelphia and later to Canada. When she had smaller children, who would cry she would have a rag filled with opium to make them sleep so it would not detect them from slave catchers.
I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can’t say — I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.”
Harriet Tubman at a suffrage convention, NY, 1896.
I bet you your history books never told you that shit. For a woman who was supposed to be illiterate, she was super clever and always stayed one step ahead of the slave catchers. Once she contacted escaping slaves, they left town on Saturday evenings, since newspapers would not print runaway slave notices until Monday morning. They had a 40,000-dollar bounty on her head (equivalent to 1,138,220 in 2019) . John Wilkes Booth shot President Lincoln; they only offered 12,000 for his bounty. Just like with most women of color, she had her share of heartache along the way.
In 1851 Harriet Tubman returned to Dorchester County for the first time since her escape to get her husband John. She saved money from various jobs to buy him a suit. Come to find out John married another woman named Caroline he thought she was dead after escaping from the plantation. Harriet Tubman stormed their house and made a scene, but she decided he was not worth the trouble. She met Frederick Douglass; they both admired one another, and he wrote letters praising her. She also met John Brown in1858 and helped him plan and recruit supporters for his 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry John Brown called her General Moses. Well, as you know he snitched to the government and the whole thing goes to shit. In December John Brown was hanged Harriet Tubman told one of her friends he did more in dying than 100 men would live.
Did you know that Harriet Tubman was one of the few Black women leading men into battle during the Civil War? Now like I was telling you before they tried to whitewash things with Harriet Tubman. When she went into war she did not go up to none of them Confederate troops and gave a fucking speech. She was a scout cook, nurse, and a spy for the Union army. The sad thing about all of her contributions to the Union army was that they did not want to pay her a pension or be recognized for her service.
Even when she was older and sick sounds familiar with Black World War two veterans, Vietnam War Veterans, Afghanistan War veterans. In February 1899 the Congress passed and President William Mc Kinley signed H.R.4982 she got a little bit of something for being a nurse and nothing for being a scout or a spy.
Ill and penniless Harriet Tubman died on March the 10th 1913 she did some much for our spirit for continuously fighting oppression and ecstatic racism today. How about the disrespectful bull shit piece of shit movie Hollywood made about her life. That was a slap in the face to every person of color who fought every day for freedom and equality. They finally put her on a 20-dollar bill will not make up shit for those of us who really know how you treated one of our greatest black leaders that ever lived while she was alive. How come I never hear any of the so-called Black historians talk about that? Harriet Tubman lives in every one of our movements to never give up or lay down to this new Jim Crow 2.0 and white supremacy we still have to deal with in 2021.
My name is Dartanya A. Williams Sr. I am a crime writer and blog writing provocateur. My website is Dartanyaawilliamssr.com.
