Harriet Tubman, 1820-1913: She Fought Slavery and Oppression

12 February 2011

JA statue in the city of Boston, Massachusetts called "Step on Board" celebrates American abolitionist Harriet Tubman.

SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: I'm Shirley Griffith.

RAY FREEMAN: And I'm Ray Freeman with the Special English program PEOPLE IN AMERICA. Every week we tell the story of someone important in the history of the United States. Today we tell about Harriet Tubman, an African American woman who fought slavery and oppression.

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SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: Historians say Harriet Tubman was born in the year Eighteen-Twenty. Nobody really knows. In the United States in the Nineteenth Century the birth of slaves was not recorded.

We do know that Harriet Tubman was one of the bravest women ever born in the United States. She helped hundreds of people escape from slavery on the Underground Railroad. This was a system that helped slaves escape from the South to states where slavery was banned.

Because of her work on the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman was called Moses. In the Bible, Moses was the leader of the Jewish people enslaved in Egypt. He brought his people out of slavery to the promised land. Harriet Tubman died in Nineteen-Thirteen. All her life, she always tried to improve life for African Americans.

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RAY FREEMAN: From a very early age, Harriet knew how slaves suffered. Her parents were slaves. They belonged to Edward Brodas, a farmer in the middle Atlantic state of Maryland. Harriet's parents tried to protect her and their ten other children as much as they could. There was little they could do, however. Slaves were treated like animals. They could be sold at any time. Families often were separated. Slave children were not permitted to act like children. By the time Harriet was three years old, Mister Brodas ordered her to carry notes from him to other farmers. Some of these farmers lived as far as fifteen kilometers away. Harriet was punished if she stopped to rest or play.