Harriet Tubman

Araminta "Minty" Ross was born into slavery in Dorchester County, Maryland, around March 1822, to enslaved parents Harriet "Rit" Green and Ben Ross. Her maternal grandmother, Modesty, had arrived in America aboard a slave ship from Africa; family tradition held that Tubman was of Ashanti descent, though no documentary evidence confirms this lineage. As a child she was hired out, beaten, and gravely injured when an overseer hurled an iron weight that struck her head, leaving her with lifelong pain, headaches, and spells of sleep.

In 1849, fearing she would be sold away, she fled north to Philadelphia, reaching free soil at roughly twenty-seven years of age. She did not keep her freedom for herself alone. Returning again and again to the Eastern Shore of Maryland, she guided some seventy enslaved people to liberty across roughly thirteen missions on the Underground Railroad, and gave instructions that freed dozens more. She was proud to say she never lost a passenger.

During the American Civil War she served the Union Army as a nurse, scout, and spy. On June 2, 1863, she guided the Combahee River Raid in South Carolina, becoming the only woman to lead an armed military operation in that war; the action liberated roughly 700 enslaved people in a single night.

In her later years she settled in Auburn, New York, championed women's suffrage, and cared for the aged and poor. She died of pneumonia on March 10, 1913, surrounded by family and friends. May her courage, her faith, and the freedom she carried to others be honored forever.