Edda Fields-Black
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
I wanted to know more, and I dug.
You could say it was an accident.
You could say it was serendipity.
It was probably all of the above.
But I stumbled upon the pension files.
Yeah, so Tubman is such an extraordinary, extraordinary figure.
She liberated herself from bondage on the Maryland Eastern Shore in 1849.
And from that point on, she made 13 trips back into the land of bondage, back to the same county.
and occasionally the same plantation where she had been held in bondage.
These are enormous acts of selflessness.
I liken it to putting one's hand in the mouth of an alligator.
When she liberated herself, she had been able to take her hand out from the alligator's mouth.
Most of us would just...
go in the opposite direction and leave the alligator alone.
But Tubman, 13 more times.
She puts it in, she takes it out.
She puts it in, she takes it out.