Harriet Tubman was an American abolitionist and political activist. Tubman was an inspirational figure in American history and is referred to as one of the most “heroic and significant figures” in United States history.

She is best known for her work on the Underground Railroad, helping to lead hundreds of enslaved people to freedom. Though her struggles were extraordinary and her courage and strength unrivalled, the legacy of her work lives on today. But there is so much more to her story than that.

Your Kid Professors Youtube episode of Harriet Tubman

Here are fifteen amazing facts about Harriet Tubman that you probably didn’t know!

1. Harriet Tubman was born into slavery in Maryland in 1822.

Tubman was born Araminta Ross in 1822 in Dorchester County, Maryland. At seven, she was put to work in the fields and suffered so much abuse that she decided to escape.

2. Tubman escaped slavery in 1849 and made her way to Pennsylvania.

In 1849, she escaped to Philadelphia, and after finding shelter, she decided to return to Maryland and help others.

3. Tubman made 19 trips back to the South to help lead slaves to freedom.

In 1850-1860, Tubman started working on the Underground Railroad, helping slaves escape. It is estimated that Tubman helped over 300 slaves to escape.

4. Tubman was nicknamed “Moses.”

Because of her labor on the Underground Railroad, Tubman earned the moniker “Moses.” She led her people to independence as a result of her efforts. As a conductor, she organized slave escape routes and led other fugitives to the network of paths that led them to Canada.

5. Tubman was a Union spy during the Civil War.

She served as a nurse at a military base and as a scout for Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson, helping recruit African-American troops. Before receiving instructions to set up a spy ring, Tubman spent months working as a laundress, running a washhouse, and acting as a nurse. As the head of the Underground Railroad, Tubman had demonstrated her unbeatable skill at gathering secret information, forming allies, and avoiding capture. Taking on her new responsibilities, Tubman became the commander of a covert military operation.

Harriet Tubman was much more than a “spy” for the Union Army; she oversaw an entire spy network! Harriet led three Union gunboats and approximately 150 Black Union troops up South Carolina’s Combahee River inland. She led them to several warehouses containing Confederate rice and cotton.

6. After the war, Tubman devoted her life to working for the rights of African Americans and women.

Moreover, Tubman was an active abolitionist, advocating for African-American rights and as a speaker at churches and rallies. In 1896, Tubman founded the National Association of Colored Women and served as its leader until it merged into what became known as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Later, in 1913, she helped found the National Negro Congress as a rights organization for African-American women.

7. After the war, Tubman devoted her life to working for the rights of African Americans and women.

Moreover, Tubman was an active abolitionist, advocating for African-American rights and as a speaker at churches and rallies. In 1896, Tubman founded the National Association of Colored Women and served as its leader until it merged into what became known as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Later, in 1913, she helped found the National Negro Congress as a rights organization for African-American women.

8. Tubman underwent brain surgery but refused anesthesia.

Tubman underwent brain surgery in 1898 but opted out of being sedated.
An overseer hit Tubman in the head with a heavyweight when she was a child after she refused to restrain a field hand who had left his plantation without permission. She was severely traumatized by the event and suffered from headaches and seizures for the rest of her life. By the late 1890s, her inability to sleep had been hampered by the pain in her head, and she found a doctor in Boston willing to operate on her brain. Instead of being sedated while the doctor cut open her skull and performed the surgery, she chose to bite on a bullet, as she had seen soldiers do during the Civil War.

While Harriet was out on a mission, she didn’t see her husband, John, for two years. During that time, he also married another woman, Nelsen Davis, a former Union soldier 20 years her junior.

9. She had nine kids

In 1844, Tubman married John Tubman, a free black man. She adopted his surname and renamed herself Harriet.
According to documents, they married in 1808 and had nine children: Linah, Mariah, Soph, Robert, Harriet (minty), Rachel, Henry, and Moses.

10. Her husband married another woman while she was on a mission.

While Harriet was out on a mission, she didn’t see her husband, John, for two years. During that time, he also married another woman, Nelsen Davis, a former Union soldier 20 years her junior.

11. She collaborated with many prominent abolitionists, including John Brown.

Tubman fled to Philadelphia before relocating to Ontario after the Fugitive Slave Act became law in the United States in 1850. Brown admired her knowledge and dubbed her “General Tubman.” Tubman assisted John Brown in planning his 1859 raid on a Harpers Ferry arsenal, one of the significant events that precipitated the Civil War. Still, he was quickly apprehended by Marines and sentenced to death. Many men who joined his raid, including two sons, were killed.

12. Harriet Tubman used “Wade in the Water” to help slaves escape

13. Tubman died in 1913 at the age of 91.

Harriet Tubman died of pneumonia on March 10, 1913, in Auburn, New York. While her exact birth date is unknown, it is believed she lived into her early 90s.

14. She has two National Parks named after her.

 Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park in Church Creek, MD and Harriet Tubman National Historical Park in Auburn, NY

15. Tubman was announced as the new face of the $20 bill.

In 2016, It was announced that Tubman would be the face of the new $20 bill. Late in President Barack Obama’s second term, it was announced that a portrait of Harriet Tubman would replace Andrew Jackson’s on the $20 Federal Reserve note, a fitting tribute to the woman who changed history. According to the proposed designs, the Biden administration said a monument of Andrew Jackson would stay on the bill’s reverse, and Harriet Tubman would be featured on the front. The $20 bill should be available in 2030.

Frederick Douglass was an abolitionist, human rights and women’s rights activist, orator, author, journalist, publisher, and social reformer. Committed to freedom, Douglass dedicated his life to achieving justice for all Americans, particularly African-Americans, women, and minority groups.

He wrote and edited an influential abolitionist newspaper for years, broke down barriers for African Americans in government service, served as an international spokesperson and statesman, and contributed to the fight against racial prejudice during the Reconstruction Era. He also published three autobiographies.

1. He was born Frederick Bailey in 1818 and later changed his name to Fredrick Douglas. 

Douglass was born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey. After successfully escaping from slavery in 1838, at the suggestion of his friend, he and his wife took the name Douglas from a narrative poem by Sir Walter Scott, Lady of the Lake.

2. He escaped at the age of 20 to New York and became free.

On September 3, 1838, Frederick Douglass escaped from slavery using a disguise and work skills he had acquired while being made to work in the shipyards of Baltimore. When Douglass boarded a train in Baltimore bound for Philadelphia, he pretended to be a sailor. It was the third time he tried to escape slavery.

3. His dad was white, but he had never met him.

His father was white and of European descent. 

4. His grandmother raised him. 

His mother was an enslaved person whom he never saw but five times because she worked on a plantation 12 miles away and died when he was pretty young when his mom died when he was seven years old.

5. Douglass gave bread to young boys to help them learn to read.

In his opinion, an enslaved or black person may obtain their key to freedom through reading. When Frederick arrives at Mrs. Auld’s plantation, she demonstrates this by teaching him how to read. Additionally showed when Frederick offered bread to white children so they could learn to read and spell. Another instance was when Frederick listened to a conversation and checked the dictionary to see what the terms meant.

6. Frederick Douglass contributes to the February celebration of Black History Month. 

Carter G. Woodson, a historian and educator, established “Negro History Week,” the forerunner to Black History Month, to coincide with the time of year when Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln commemorated their birthdays. Douglass opted to celebrate his birthday on February 14 even though he was born into slavery, and it is unknown when he was born.

7. Douglas was a pastor and a public speaker. 

After relocating to New Bedford, Massachusetts, Douglass was shocked by the discrimination and condescending attitude he encountered in the northern Methodist churches. His membership in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church led to his ordination as a preacher there in 1839.

8. He believed in the rights of black people and women.

Frederick Douglass believed that rights should not be restricted by race or gender and dedicated his entire life to advancing women’s rights. He thought marginalized groups ought to help one another, and Douglass was a crucial figure in the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention on Women’sWomen’s Rights.

 9. He wrote a book about himself. 

The earliest and best-known of Douglass’ three autobiographies, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an enslaved American, was released in 1845.

In his autobiography, Douglass said, “I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it.”  

10. Douglass started a newspaper.

Frederick Douglass established a newspaper opposing slavery called The North Star, afterward known as Frederick Douglass’ Paper. The North Star was first printed on December 3, 1847, with money Douglass had acquired during a speaking tour in Great Britain and Ireland. It quickly became one of the most significant African American antislavery journals before the Civil War. As suggested by the newspaper’s name, runaway slaves used the North Star in the night sky as a compass.

11. Douglass served as an advisor to Presidents.

He served as U.S. Marshal for D.C. under five presidents.

Abraham Lincoln described him as the most deserving person of the nineteenth century. Douglass was appointed to various roles in his later years. During Rutherford B., he held the position of U.S. Marshal for the District of Columbia. Significantly. When he had these posts, political activism by African Americans was severely constrained by violence and fraud.

12. Frederick Douglass was the most photographed American of the 19th century. 

With more portraits taken of him than even Abraham Lincoln, Douglass deliberately went looking for photographers because he thought that photography was a crucial instrument for attaining civil rights since it provided a means of truthfully and fairly portraying African Americans. He purposefully avoided smiling for the camera, partly to contrast the “happy slave” caricatures that were popular then, especially in settings like minstrel shows where white artists played racist plays in blackface.

13. He was the only Black American attending the First Women’s Rights Convention.

Frederick Douglass gave a passionate statement about being the only African American present at the crucial Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. Despite his unshakeable conviction, The Vote demonstrates how the 15th Amendment divided Douglass and the women’s movement’s pioneers.

14. Frederick Douglass was the first African-American to run for U.S president 

In 1848, Douglass’ campaign mainly occurred before black people were given the right to vote, and at the same time as slavery was officially allowed in the United States. Barack Obama was the first Black American to receive the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 2009.   

Frederick Douglass was the first African American to have a presidential appointment confirmed by the U.S. Senate. A few years later, in 1877, President Rutherford Hayes named him the U.S. Marshal of the District of Columbia.

 15. He died at the age of 77

Douglass went to a meeting of the National Council of Women on February 20, 1895. He arrived back at his Cedar Hill house in the late afternoon and was getting ready to deliver a speech at a nearby church when he had a heart attack and died. Douglass was aged 77.

Conclusion

Douglass, an American legend who championed social justice and equity, earned the moniker “Lion of Anacostia” near the end of his life. He bravely contested the racial prejudices of African Americans through his writings, lectures, and photography. Early in the 20th century, during Negro History Week, the precursor of Black History Month, which many communities anchored to the day Douglass’s birthday was observed, February 14, his contributions to the Black American community and American history were honored. Today, Frederick Douglass is recognized not just for his ascent from slavery to the top echelons of American society but also for his commitment to pressuring the nation to uphold its goals and acknowledge the rights of all people.