Black History                       Month Essays

A woman beyond uncertainty and pain!

You often hear many stories of heroism that prevailed throughout African American history. People who fought for their God-given rights and paid their lives for it. Modern history is full of legendary stories of people who fought for civil rights, equality, etc. My story however is not about a figure of modern history. On the contrary, it is about a woman who lived hundreds of years ago when there was no hope for freedom or sanctuary; when African American were slaves to be bought and sold like cattle. Not only that but she is a woman who projected more bravery and courage than men at a time women were taken as weaker creatures of no stamina. Harriet Tubman did not only fight for freedom, but she also broke the mold, she stood out as a woman beyond the uncertainty and pain giving hope to hundreds and thousands of slaves.

“When I found I crossed the line, I looked at my hand to see if I am the same person. The sun was shining like gold, there was glory over everything.  I felt like heaven.” These were the first words spoken by Harriet when she first made it to safety. Harriet Tubman was said to be born around 1820 in slavery. She was one of nine children, three of which were sold. She was put into labor from a young age, and she was often sexually and physically assaulted, as it was common practice at the time. Tubman suffered from a head injury at a young age, but she was soon to overcome her disability. She was a very smart person, albeit she never learned how to read or write. She was good at calculations, and she made the utmost of the information and the knowledge given to her.

Harriet started contemplating the idea of escaping when rumors had it that the new owner of her plantation farm was set to sell her. She embarked on an unknown journey where the glow of the stars was to be her only guide. She initially started her journey with two of her brothers, who quickly got frightened and decided to go back. Slaves, who attempted to escape at the time, were regularly made an example. Dogs were unleashed after them to rip their bodies to pieces, they were punished by cutting a part of their body when they were returned to their owners. Bounty hunters were paid to hunt slaves and return even their ripped bodies. The decision to escape for any slave was a statement of suicide. Harriet was only 29 years old when she decided to escape. She was not only a woman beyond her age, but a creature that projected stamina, resilience, and fearlessness like no other creature at her time.

“I had crossed the line, and I was free, but I was a stranger in a strange land. My home was in Maryland where my family friends were, and they had to be free” After Harriet Tubman made it to safety in her new home in Philadelphia she returned 19 times and freed more than 300 slaves over ten years. She was called 

‘Moses” for liberating so many oppressed souls. She used her experience as a field hunter, and a lumberjack, in addition to her wisdom in building a secret network of people and places to help so many slaves find freedom.  Harriet Tubman had a head injury that often caused seizures or unreal vision, yet it did not hold her back. Tubman had a cause to fight for, and she had no room for physical disability. Harriet was the first woman to lead a military rate in 1863. She was a scout and a nurse, and she later founded a nursing home on her property.

When I think of Harriet Tubman, I think of a woman yet in a different time.  A time when women had no voice. I think of a person who was born into slavery, where freedom was only a word with no meaning. Harriet was not fighting for a right, she was fighting for life; the life of hers and so many others who were deprived of their humanity. Did she have any paradigm for success? She only had a blueprint of failure for every soul that tried before her and failed. Harriet was a freedom seeker with determination and courage like no other. It is of great astonishment that such an abolitionist, a suffragist, and one of the most revered figures in American history did not have anyone to look up to. However, she sketched her story of success from scratch, giving hope to hundreds of thousands of people throughout history. When I think of Harriet Tubman, I am proud to call myself a woman. 

                                                                                                                              Gemma, Grade 7

The Man Who Moved America Like No other!

Black History is full of so many phenomenal figures that have fought for the cause of equality throughout the years. People like Malcolm X or Dr. Martin Luther King spent years protesting against the system, breaching people, sweating to mobilize the nation to rise and fight for their God-given rights. It took some of them months, and others took years for the public to trust them, but it has never been the case that one man mobilized millions of protesters over a one-day encounter for 19 consecutive months. The hero of my story was not an activist, he was not a public figure, he was just your random next-door guy who struggled to make a living. Over one night, America rose like never before for this man. The entire nation, through its 50 states, has been bombarded with waves of rage. People were killed, buildings were looted, and police officers were seriously injured. People stood fearlessly in the face of guns because they were not going to let this incident go. Even the president was publicly attacked for his racism and lack of empathy. The entire world tuned in to see how America rose for the man who “could not breathe!!”

   It was just like any other day, the sun was shining in the state of Minneapolis, Minnesota when George Floyd, a father of five kids, walked into a store with a 20 dollar bill. Little did he know that he will never see his kids again or walk out of the store alive. A blue pigment appeared on the 20-dollar bill, leading the cashier to believe it was fake. The cashier called the police. Right after, four police officers appeared at the scene and started dealing with Floyd violently. George did not show any sign of resistance, yet he was pinned to the floor and handcuffed. One of the police officers knelt on Floyd's neck and back for nine minutes and 29 seconds straight. George has repeatedly called out, “I can not breathe.” The police officer did not cave, he kept on pushing hard on his neck, blocking the air from coming in. George has stopped moving, then died instantly. An ambulance was called right after, but George Floyd was declared dead.

   “Our struggle is not of one day, one week or one year, it is of a lifetime or even may be of so many lifetimes.” These are the words spoken by John Lewis, a civil right leader and a fighter of freedom. In this quote, Lewis recognizes how many lives were taken in the pursuit to find freedom and achieve equality. George Floyd is a lifetime that was put into the pursuit of this struggle. The minute those four cops walked into the store to arrest him, he was racially profiled, he was judged by the color of his skin, hence came the coercive power in dealing with him. I can guarantee you beyond any reasonable doubt that if George was a Caucasian male from Kentucky or Massachusetts, he would have been alive today.

  When we study the atrocities committed throughout the years against the African Americans, you tend to attribute it to lack of knowledge, a deteriorated level of humanity or civilization that once existed yet tended to diminish in today’s world. The story of George Floyd however is an ultimate manifestation that racism is still very much alive. The monster is still within so many people. Our so-called modern civilization did not yet liberate the so many minds that tend to exercise racial profiling and use force against a certain race.

   When I think of George Floyd, I  do not only stop to think of the 46-year-old man who will never see the light again. Neither do I think of the bad inheritance of racism that white race have passed throughout the years. I find myself also thinking of every man and every woman who left the comfort of their own home to protest on that day, on that week and on that month. America will never be the same again after that day! The people have risen to show that black life does matter! Signs were flaunted across the streets of America with George Floyd’s last words” I can not breathe” . Every man on the street was George Floyd in that protest, and they all chanted together his last words, paying tribute to his murdered soul. I can not help but admitting that the death of George Floyd has brought humanity, solidarity, and empathy together to life in the form of George’s supporters. 

   “We can launch men into space, but can we treat men with love and respect?” these are some words of wisdom that have been spoken by world leaders after the incident. The story of Floyd confronts each one of us with the fact that racism is there. It reveals the truth that no matter how much advanced we are as human being in every field and sphere, racism is still alive in so many people. We need to put an en end to the harm and address the numerous parameters of profiling that motivates racism in our every day’s life. Over the past two decades, there have been so much advancement in the level of interconnectivity in the world, we need to use this interconnectivity to address issues of racism, to bring the world together in one battle against profiling. We need to use the tools to not excuse violence and to operate on a higher ethical code. “To be, is to do.” — Immanuel Kant. Let us all start doing so that we can be.

                                                                                                                                           Angie, Grade 7

Harriet Tubman

Harriet Tubman once said, “On my Underground Railroad, I never ran off the track and I never lost a passenger.” Escaping slavery, putting everything on the line to save her family, leading a military raid, championing the cause of women’s suffrage, these are just a handful of the accomplishments of one of America’s most courageous heroes. Harriet Tubman was born Araminta Ross in Dorchester County, Maryland, in the early 1820s.

Born into chattel slavery Araminta or Minty, was the fifth of nine children. Two of Minty’s older sisters were sold to a chain gang. Even as a small child, Minty was sold out to different owners who subjected her to whippings and punishments. Young Minty’s life was about to change when running a simple errand to a neighborhood store. There, an overseer, threw a two pound weight at a fugitive enslaved person, missed and struck Minty instead. Her injury caused her to experience sleeping spells, which we know of today as narcolepsy, for the rest of her life.

Minty's owner tried to sell her, but there were no buyers for an enslaved person who fell into sleeping spells. She was instead put to work with her father, Ben Ross, who taught her how to lumber. Lumbering increased Minty’s physical strength and put her in touch with free black sailors, who shipped the wood to the north. From then, Minty learnt about the secret communications that occurred along trade routes, information that would prove invaluable later in her life. In this mixed atmosphere of free and enslaved blacks working side by side, Minty met John Tubman, a free black man she later married in 1844. After marriage, she renamed herself Harriet after her mother. Harriet Tubman’s owner died in 1849. When his widow planned to sell off his enslaved human beings, Harriet feared she would be sold and taken from everyone she loved. She had heard of an “underground railroad,” a secret network of safehouses, boat captains and wagon drivers, willing to harbor fugitive enslaved people on their way north. So Tubman fled with two of her brothers, Ben and Harry. They eventually turned back fearing they were lost. But in one of her sleeping spells, Harriet dreamed that she could fly like a bird. Looking down below, she saw the path of liberation, and in the autumn of 1849 she set out on her own, following the north star to Pennsylvania. 

Tubman returned to the South 13 times to free her niece, brother, parents and many others. She earned the nick-name black Moses and worked diligently with other fellow abolitionists to help enslaved people escape, first to the north and later to Canada. 

Later on, Harriet Tubman worked as a union army nurse, scout and spy during the Civil War. In 1863, she became the first woman in the USA to plan and lead a military raid, liberating nearly seven hundred enslaved people in South Carolina. 

Undaunted and persistent, she raised funds for formerly enslaved persons and helped build schools and hospitals on their behalf. And in 1888, Tubman became more active in the fight for women's right to vote. 

Harriet died on March 10, 1913 due to pneumonia and was buried in Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn, New York. Her last words were, “I go to prepare a place for you”. 

Remember your twenty dollar bill? They may soon be replaced with this true American hero who despite the circumstance and the difficult time she was living in, paved the way for other activists believing that all human beings are created equal.

I have learnt that it is possible to empower yourself and other individuals even through difficult times with hard work. Born into slavery, illiterate, and with a long term brain condition that lasted her entire life, Harriet showed me that with boldness, and faith in what you believe in, you can make significant change in this world. 

I was also very inspired by how her role as an underground railroad conductor became much harder and forced her to lead enslaved people further north to Canada after the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, which allowed fugitive and freed workers in the north to be captured and enslaved again. She did not give up even when the situation got worse for people of color. 

When I think of everything that Harriet Tubman achieved from slave abolitionist, leader, to nurse, cook, and head of an espionage network for the Union Army, I feel motivated and inspired to work for long term goals in my life with determination and resolve. 

                                                                                                                  Ana Sofia, Grade 6