 I'm Marcia Joyner, and this is Navigating the Journey, and today's journey is a long, long time ago, far, far away. If you can say that Maryland is a far, far away, but that's where we're going. We're going to take a journey into the life and legacy of Harriet Tubman and her connection to the eastern shore of Maryland. We will also see places about Frederick Douglass, who's also from the eastern shore of Maryland. But first, I want to thank WMAR Fatalty and Baltimore for allowing us to air this beautiful piece that they did, the Harriet Tubman Maryland story, her life and legacy, as well as her connection to the eastern shore of Maryland. We will also see Frederick Douglass after escaping from slavery in Maryland. He became a national leader of the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts and New York, gaining note in his oratory and incited anti-slavery writings. Harriet Tubman also born a slave in 1822. Through her guts and determination and leadership, he led more than 13 missions and 70 slaves to freedom by way of what has become the Underground Railroad. And she did not lose one of them. During the Civil War, Tubman served as a scout by the Union Army. Harriet Tubman became a hero at the time when women were not acknowledged for their efforts. He was an American abolitionist, a political activist, a struggle for women's suffering. Her story is an integral part of American history. As a part of our history, which has been glossed over, it must be told. WMAR 2 News presents Harriet Tubman, a Maryland story. Welcome into a special edition of WMAR 2 News. We're here at the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center. I'm Skyler Henry. And I'm Elsa M. Many of you have heard that there's a new film coming out next month about Maryland's own Harriet Tubman. But luckily for us living here in Maryland, we don't have to wait for that film to come out to see how Harriet lived. Yeah, you can actually walk the ground that Harriet used to walk on and touch history with your own hands. And we're right outside of Baltimore. It's just a short drive here to the eastern shore. And it is beautiful out here with a lot of history waiting to be observed. Join us as we take a tour of the Underground Railroad and the life of Harriet Tubman. We begin at the Great Wall of Tubman. See what I call our Great Wall of Tubman. These are all the images we have of Miss Harriet Tubman, including the newer one of her in her 40s. This is the oldest image we have of Harriet. She's wearing a shawl that was given to her by the Queen of England. That shawl is located in the National Museum of African American History and Culture in D.C. What I also love about this section here is when she is standing, it is actually life-sized. Tubman only stood at about five feet tall. So over here when she's in the Civil War Guard, she's only at five feet tall and over here in her later life as well. Harriet Tubman, as we know her, was born airman to Ross and went by Minty. In slave from birth, she was only a few years old when she was put to work. Over here we talk about Tubman as a child. Tubman at work. This shows her checking muskrats. This is a muskrat and this is the Little Blackwater River and this is young Harriet Tubman checking these muskrat traps. She would have done this in late fall or early winter when their coats were the thickest because they were wanted for their coats or for their pelts. This shows her grabbing the muskrat. She's not wearing a hat. She's not wearing shoes. She's not wearing gloves. And as you can see, she's sunk completely in the mud here, which is very accurate for the Blackwater River area. The next section we discuss is the Bucktown Village Store incident. Harriet Tubman was an adolescent when she went to the Bucktown Village Store with the plantation cook. They went to purchase a few items for the home. We know that there was a young boy. He comes in, comes into the store for some apparent reason. We don't really know. But he ends up in the store. He's pursued by his overseer from one of the local farms. And then Minty, as she was at that age, she was about 13, comes in and, you know, it was totally coincidental. She ends up in here just coincidentally at the same time as his skirmish has taken place between this overseer and this young boy. The boy was, you know, he was trying to flee, you know, and so he, the overseer, yells to the young boy or to Minty, rather, to, hey, help, you know, grab, grab him, helps him do it. And she refuses and actually berates the man, lets him have it really. And that's, it's pretty incredible because she was, you know, she was 13, she was, you know, a female. She was enslaved, you know, so you really get a glimpse. You really, that's kind of the first time you get a glimpse of who she is and who she was to become. You know, this very bold, strong-willed person. And it's kind of cool to see that even at 13 years old. The little boy sees that as an opportunity to run, to flee. And so he does, he runs out the door and that's when the overseer picked up what we think was a two pound counterweight and he hurls it at the young boy. And of course it hits Minty instead, right over the left eye. And it's a near fatal injury that really affected her for the rest of her life. The cool thing about it is really it was a turning point for her though. It really was a turning point for her in her life and it really was a blessing in disguise if you will because, you know, subsequently from that blow, you know, she had a form of epilepsy where she would have sleeping spells. And she was a very spiritual woman, very religious, very, very spiritual. And she said that in some of her interviews that those dreams and visions that she received during these sleeping spells calls from the head injury were instrumental in her escape. But she, that God literally told her where to go, gave her direction and guidance throughout her escapes. So, you know, you know, from her own words that that blow was instrumental to her. So that all happened right here. She was a very spiritual woman. This is one of the few quotes we have here that are not directly from Herrick Tubman. It's from Thomas Scare and he said, I never met with any person of any color who had more confidence in the voice of God as spoke director her soul and her faith in a supreme power truly was great. Now that's an important quote because Thomas Garrett was a Quaker, a very religious man and he believed that everybody had a spark inside them and nobody should be enslaved. He actually helped over a thousand people emancipate themselves through his home in Wilmington on the Underground Railroad. So for a white male Quaker to talk about a formerly enslaved black woman's faith in 1868, this strongly really speaks volumes about Tubman's faith. The next section we're going to talk about is her time on the Underground Railroad and her self-emancipation. This section here talks about Tubman's self-emancipation from Poplar Neck up in Caroline County. She self-emancipated in the fall of 1849. The quote here said, as I had reasoned this out in my mind, that there's two things that I had a right to, liberty or death. If I could not have one, then I was going to have the other because no man was going to take me alive. As she was leaving, she was walking away from Poplar Neck. Her owner came home for the day. She opened the gate. She sang the goodbye song. She continued to sing the song to let her family and friends know that she was leaving heading towards freedom. She closed the door behind him as he rode his horse through and she walked to freedom. It wasn't uncommon to see Harriet Tubman singing. She sang frequently. After that booktown, there was a store incident. She would hear flyers singing. She would have very vivid dreams, so she would start singing and clapping herself. So it wouldn't be strange to have an enslaved person where she'd hear it walking around and singing. After making those first steps towards freedom and away from the Broditz Farm, Minty got help from a Quaker woman. She recounts that while she was enslaved, she met a Quaker woman. That woman was a white Quaker woman. That woman told her, if you ever need help with anything, please let me know. The night she escaped, she actually visited her cabin where she lived. The woman actually let her stay there and fed her and whatnot. The woman then told her how to get to the next stop. She said, travel along this waterway. When you get to the end of this river, there will be a white house with green shutters. She looked for that house, and so then after staying with one initial woman, she travels on and she talks about how, when she came to that second house, how nervous she was knocking on the door because she didn't know that person, and she was very fearful that maybe the person doesn't live here anymore. Maybe this is not true, et cetera, et cetera, but the woman said, oh, come on in and let her in and shelter, and then she sends her on to the next location. When we come back, we take a look at how Harriet Tubman freed dozens of slaves after free herself. Welcome back. You know, when Harriet got to freedom, she said it was wonderful and that it was lovely, but there was no one here to welcome her to freedom. She returned back to Maryland 13 times to emancipate more than 70 people, and on her first trip back, she came back here to the Broads Farm to get her husband, John Tubman. When Harriet left here, she left and didn't tell John she was leaving. She wouldn't tell John because John treated her just like the slave owner. He told her, if you ever attempt to run away, I'm going to tell. So Harriet loved him, but she ran away without him. She came back two years after to come back. She brought him a suit of clothes. She brought him shoes. He had remarried. So she said, she was hurt. But she said, if he can live without me, I can live without him. And she went on and she took someone else that wanted to leave. When Harriet came back to take people to freedom, she came back for the Rosses. That was her maiden name. When she came back for her father and her mother, they were in their 70s and she knew that they could not walk all the way to freedom. So she created a one axle cart, stole a horse, and she emancipated her elderly parents. One story passed down through community members is the story of how Harriet helped her niece, Kasiah, escape. Kasiah was married to a free man, John Bowie, but she and her children were about to be placed on the auction block. Kasiah was going to be auctioneered off to be sold. They didn't know where. Kasiah and her children. So every time someone would raise the price of the auction, John Bowie would top it, even though he didn't have any money. When the auctioneer decided that he was going to take a luxury brick, he didn't shackle them. So John Bowie took his wife and his children by hand and let them down high street. They hid and until they could get away to take a boat and they went to Baltimore to meet Harriet Tubman. So she hears about this couple. And lo and behold, it's family members of her. And so she decides that she's going to go home to Baltimore and bring them the rest of the way. And Mr. Stil is telling you, no, no, no, don't do that. It's too dangerous. You're a fugitive slave yourself. You could get caught and then be enslaved again. And she says, no, no, no, I'm going to do it. And so she comes down to Baltimore and brings the people from here back to Philadelphia and get their freedom. So her first journey on the Underground Railroad as far as helping liberate other people was here in Baltimore. On this same high street where Harriet's niece escaped, there's another story coming to light. Lizzie Amby was enslaved by Dr. Alexander Bailey and used the Underground Railroad to run away to freedom. Thanks to the current homeowner and the State Highway Administration, more about this story is now being unveiled. Cambridge is pretty much ground zero for Harriet Tubman. This is where she worked. This is where her influences felt the most. For years, it was thought that slaves lived in the cabin on the Bailey home, but now there is science to prove that those thoughts were correct. Catherine Morrison opened up her home for excavation so that the past could have a voice. A, they didn't get to choose their own destiny, which is a crime. They didn't get to live with the freedoms that we take for granted. And their stories were lost. They were property. They didn't even have sometimes names anywhere in the paperwork. They were just woman, 35, child, 15. And so they deserve, I think that there's a lot of division in this country because there's not understanding on both sides for what happens and why it happens and how to heal those rifts. And if I can just help just a tiny bit to have communication, have conversation, open the doors to the healing, I think, oh, sorry. I think it's, why would I not do that? It's an opportunity. Sometimes things are laid at your feet and you just have to do them. I have to do this. It's the right thing to do. So I'm hoping, hoping something good comes of it, hoping some people's stories are told, hoping there's a commemoration of the people that suffered to make this country a better place. And they did. We have an incredible economy, but it didn't happen without those people. And so, like I said, it's the right thing to do. I just want to give these people a voice. I just want to have their story be told. I want us to all maybe have a chance to heal a little bit and move forward and just be Americans and stop having race be an issue. And I'm sure I am a person who does not completely understand the story of minorities and the suffering that they've endured. I only know what I read in books and I know what people tell me, but I don't know what that truly, truly feels like. I don't. Opportunities come sometimes and you don't see them coming, but when they do, what do you do? You have to do the right thing. So... I'm sorry. African American history is some of the hardest history to learn about because so much of it is hidden in view. And what that means is that there are these cabins in the backyards. There's these artifact collections in the ground, and it's really up to the archeologists to go into the ground, the soil, and try and understand what this is saying about the people who lived here. These people don't always have their names recorded in wills or journals or in public documents. So a lot of times their names are lost. And if we're lucky, sometimes we just get a first name. So it's really important that we go into these collections because this is where we learn about every day, what it was like to be enslaved, what it was like to be African American, every day in Maryland. Sometimes all we have left are the toys they left behind or the food remains. But this is where we start. This is where we build on those stories. And we use historical documents. We use oral histories from the descended communities. And when you layer those up on top of each other, all of a sudden you have a new narrative of how we lived here in Maryland 150, 200 years ago. In 1863, Harriet Tubman became the first and only African American woman to plan and lead a military raid during the Civil War. And they emancipated over 700 enslaved people. They blew up plantations. They flooded rice fields. And this quote here says, I prayed to God to make me strong and able to fight. And that's what I've prayed for ever since. And here you can see Harriet Tubman in a runabout and she's reaching down to help bring people to their freedom and then take them to the gunships and then eventually to be emancipated. All right, when we come back, we're going to tell you about another famous abolitionist from this area. Stay tuned. Around the same time that Harriet Tubman was dreaming of her freedom, so was another famous person born on the Eastern Shore, Frederick Douglass. He spent much of his enslavement in Baltimore working on the docks in the shipyard. And Frederick Douglass in his autobiography talks about staying where he was living in Fells Point. And he can hear these chain games of people being transported down to the docks and they're crying. Their loved ones are falling behind them to get one more last look at them before they're put on the ship because I mean, think about it, if you're a parent and say your children are being taken from you and sold away to slavery, you're never going to see them again. And in the middle of the night, you can hear all this commotion going on from these slave couples where they're traveling down the street. These people would get ready to be loaded onto these ships and sent to points further south. Like Harriet, he refused to give up on freedom. No man can tell the intense agony which is felt by a slave when wavering on the point of making his escape. All that he has is at stake. And even that which he is not is also at stake. The life which he has may be lost and the liberty which he seeks may not be gained. And Frederick Douglass really kind of exemplifies people's experiences on the Underground Railroad for a number of reasons. First being is that he tried to escape more than once so he was actually caught the first time he pursued freedom. He was imprisoned for a while but then he makes a subsequent escape attempt and is successful. And that would have been very common people traveling on Underground Railroad oftentimes needed more than one trip so to speak to be successful. Sometimes people when they were escaping freedom they didn't have time to repair. They're working out in a plantation environment and they see a slave trader coming and they decide then and there they have to run and pursue their freedom. People that had to do those decisions on the spur of the moment were less likely to be successful than people that had time but Frederick Douglass he did have time to prepare and plan out his strategy of how he's been escaped so he's much more successful. Third thing that helped him was that he had assistance so Anna Murray plays a big role in Frederick Douglass successfully escaping slavery in that regard. At the time of his escape both Ann and Frederick were earning money of their own. They tested out a theory that blacks could only buy a train ticket with a responsible white person authorizing it. Thankfully it wasn't being enforced at the time. They purchased a semen's outfit for him so he's dressed up like a sailor he has these papers that's showing that he's able to travel about he gets on the train is able to buy a ticket and from there he travels on to New York and gets his freedom and then ironically enough one of the first things he does when him and Anna are reunited in New York they get married. Living parallel lives they both fought for freedom in their own individual ways while Harriet was risking her life trying to get others to freedom Douglass was giving eloquent speeches challenging the idea of blacks being a lesser race. Harriet Tubman is now one of the most well known conductors of the Underground Railroad but that wasn't always the case as Frederick Douglass once put it for years only the stars in the sky really knew the work that she did. In 1868 Frederick Douglass wrote a letter to Harriet saying Most that I have done and suffered and the service of our cause has been in public and I have received much encouragement at every step of the way. You on the other hand have labored in a private way I have wrought in the day and you in the night and I had the applause of the crowd and the satisfaction it comes to of being approved by the multitude while the most that you have done has been witnessed by a few trembling scared and foot sore bondsmen and women whom you have let out of the house of bondage and whose heartfelt God bless you has been your only reward. The midnight sky and the silent stars have been the witness of your devotion to freedom and of your heroism accepting John Brown of Sacred Memory I know of no one who has willingly encountered more parents and hardships to serve our enslaved people than you have. Much that you have done would seem improbable to those who do not know you as I know you it is to me a great pleasure and a great privilege to bear testimony for your character and your works and to say to those to whom you may come that I regard you in every way truthful and trustworthy your friend Frederick Douglass. Our final section over here talks about Tubman's later life she moved to Auburn and she opened up a home for the aged African-Americans as well as a church in her own home that she opened up to anyone that was friendless and indigent and hungry anyone that needed aid. As a story of Harriet Tubman prepares to come to the big screen next month it is clear that her legacy will be felt for centuries to come. So right now we're in Cambridge, Maryland and it's a city of a little bit more than 12,000 people and over the last few months it's seen double that that's because of this. She looks so real. And I started doing sketches and I one sketch led to another and so finally I hit one that just had a position and I thought oh my goodness you know that's it you know at a moment where you suddenly realize I can have Harriet Tubman reaching out through the wall. And taking you on a journey many of us have heard of may not know the full story too. Michael Rosado admits when he signed on to paint the courage, strength and bravery of Harriet Tubman through a mural there's a lens he can't see the image through but for so many others no matter the age it's an instant monument. And that moment to me is the most powerful ball when one person has to decide to go and the other person has to project enough authority to say trust me we're gonna make it. Then your two-story painting brushed onto the facade of the Harriet Tubman Museum and Education Center has now attracted people from around the world. The Trump-Loy or three-dimensional optical illusion art draws people to grab Harriet's hand. The background shows off the natural beauty of Dorchester County with its lob-lolly pines and marshes and then a boat. Symbolizing when Harriet boated her niece in another woman from Cambridge to Annapolis and on to freedom. The fact that people are willing to go off the beaten path go off a route 50 come all the way from Baltimore throw it up to whatever just to see this image and then we have so much more that we can offer them. You're forced to look into her eyes. You're forced to put yourself in a position of somebody standing in front of it you standing in front of it and then the impact it might have had if you were in that moment where you had to take that hand. It took about two weeks to finish the mural but not without months of prior planning and sketches. There are many people who are coming to this country for the same thing that she felt just trying to get from Maryland to Pennsylvania. Now we have people coming from all over the world on the bridge of hope symbolizing not only a journey for freedom but opportunity. This was an incredible moment in time where a woman was willing to sacrifice self for the people that want to take the hand. Years later the stars are not the only ones to know of Harriet Tubman's heroism. Thousands have come to this very mural and reached out to her hand for new inspiration. We hope you've learned something new about Harriet Tubman and we'll come check out a bit of history for yourself. Good night. First let me say thank you thank you thank you Mahalo to W channel 2 in Baltimore for allowing us to see this beautiful beautiful film. So I want you to stay tuned not to David we discovered in this film is a part that I didn't know and that is how Harriet Tubman rode the boat across the Delaware to Cape May, New Jersey and I had family at Cape May and didn't know this story. So I am going to bring you the story of that part of the Underground Railroad. So stay tuned to think tech away and we'll see the next part. There is so much of this history to you. Thank you so much again WMAR channel 2 in Baltimore. Thank you for being with us. See you next time.