A Woman Called Moses

She is remembered as one of the most famous conductors of the Underground Railroad, helping to smuggle dozens of people out of slavery and into safety. But she was also an abolitionist, a Union spy during the Civil War, and spent the last years of her life aiding the poor and aged.

Escaping from slavery in 1849, Harriet Tubman would return to the South first to rescue members of her family, then, later, to help strangers to freedom. She is believed to have rescued over 300 people along the Underground Railroad -- and that's not counting the 750 slaves Tubman helped the Union army to rescue in a South Carolina raid during the Civil War. When she died, she was buried with military honors at the Fort Hill Cemetery in Auburn, New York.

Read on to learn more about the life and legacy of this amazing woman:

Online Resources:

-- Harriet Tubman - a biography from History.com (the History Channel's official website). Includes videos and a photo gallery.

-- Harriet Tubman - another look at Tubman's life, featured by Biography.com.

-- Tubman: Civil War Spy - this all-ages article from National Geographic Kids tells the story of Tubman's role in the Civil War: "the first woman in American history to lead a military expedition." (The article mentions the book Harriet Tubman, Secret Agent -- click here to get it from the Library!)

-- Harriet Tubman - from America's Library. An all-ages look at the life and stories of Harriet Tubman, from the Library of Congress.

-- Harriet Tubman's Amazing Grace - from Smithsonian Magazine. A closer look at an artifact from Tubman's past.

-- Petition of Harriet Tubman - Despite her service during the Civil War, Tubman was not awarded any benefits for her service (drawing, instead, a small widow's pension given to her for her husband's war service). See scans of the affidavit which Tubman presented to Congress, petitioning for her rightful benefits.

-- Harriet Tubman Home for the Aged - from the National Park Service. Read more about the home Tubman helped open to aged and impoverished African Americans in the last years of her life.

-- The New Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad State Park - this Maryland state park, slated to open next year, commemorates the life and legacy of Harriet Tubman.

From the Catalog:

-- Harriet Tubman: Imagining a Life by Beverly Lowry.

-- Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom by Catherine Clinton.

-- Bound for the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero by Kate Clifford Larson.

-- Harriet Tubman: Myth, Memory, and History by Milton C. Sernett.


Other Resources from the Catalog:

-- Moses: When Harriet Tubman Led Her People to Freedom by Carole Boston Weatherford; illustrated by Kadir Nelson. A beautifully-illustrated picture book for all ages, about Tubman's first trip north to freedom.

-- They Shall Run: Harriet Tubman Poems by Quraysh Ali Lansana.

-- A Woman Called Moses [DVD] - starring Cicely Tyson as Tubman.



-- Post by Ms. B

Freedom's First

Thanks to our Children's Librarian for another great post -- all about Elizabeth Keckley, dressmaker and companion to one of our country's most famous First Ladies! 

Elizabeth Keckley (played by Gloria Reuben) and Mary Todd Lincoln (played by Sally Fields)

The Oscar-nominated film Lincoln brings to life many historical figures who played a part in the struggle to pass the 13th Amendment. Some, like Secretary of State William Henry Seward (1801 – 1872) or Congressman Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania (1792 – 1868) were well-known in their own right.

But the character portrayed by Gloria Reuben probably would not be remembered at all if it wasn’t for her connection to President Lincoln through Mrs. Lincoln --  even though her life is the stuff movies are made of.

Elizabeth Keckley (some places spelled Keckly) was born a slave, and through her skills as a dressmaker, was able to buy her freedom. She met Mary Todd Lincoln on the day of the first inauguration, and she soon became dressmaker, companion, and confidant to the troubled First Lady.

Mrs. Lincoln had grown up in the care of her beloved “mammy,” and Elizabeth became another great source of strength and comfort to her, especially when the Lincolns' son, Willie, died.

The President, on the other hand, was not accustomed to dealing with “coloreds” on a personal level. He certainly did not grow up with servants, and because he was from Illinois (a state that had a severely enforced segregation policy), he did not have the experience with free blacks that many in his government did. This scene from the movie (screenplay by Tony Kushner) sums up the feelings of both Lincoln and Elizabeth:



(The carriage has pulled up and Mary is entering the White House. Lincoln helps Mrs. Keckley down from the carriage.)

(She hesitates before proceeding in. Then she faces Lincoln.)

ELIZABETH KECKLEY
I know the vote is only four days away; I know you’re concerned. Thank you for your concern over
this, and I want you to know: They’ll approve it. God will see to it.

LINCOLN
I don’t envy Him His task. He may wish He’d chosen an instrument for His purpose more wieldy than the House of Representatives.

ELIZABETH KECKLEY
Then you’ll see to it.

(Lincoln looks at her, considering. Then:)

LINCOLN
Are you afraid of what lies ahead? For your people? If we succeed?

ELIZABETH KECKLEY
White people don’t want us here.

LINCOLN
Many don’t.

ELIZABETH KECKLEY
What about you?

LINCOLN
I … I don’t know you, Mrs. Keckley. Any of you. You’re … familiar to me, as all people are. Unaccommodated, poor, bare, forked creatures such as we all are. You have a right to expect what I expect, and likely our expectations are not incomprehensible to each other. I assume I’ll get used to you. But what you are to the nation, what’ll become of you once slavery’s day is done, I don’t know.

ELIZABETH KECKLEY
What my people are to be, I can’t say. Negroes have been fighting and dying for freedom since the first of us was a slave. I never heard any ask what freedom will bring. Freedom’s first. As for me: My son died, fighting for the Union, wearing the Union blue. For freedom he died. I’m his mother. That’s what I am to the nation, Mr. Lincoln. What else must I be?

On the night the President was shot, Mary called for Elizabeth to be by her side. After his death, Mary gave Elizabeth some of the President’s personal grooming items, as well as the blood-spattered cloak and bonnet that Mary had been wearing at the theater. (These items were later the center of controversy with Mary, when Elizabeth attempted to sell them.)

Elizabeth traveled with Mrs. Lincoln to Chicago to help her start a new life. There was no pension for the President’s widow, and Mary, who had often been criticized for her lavish spending, was deeply in debt. When Mary, with Elizabeth’s help, tried to raise funds by selling her White House wardrobe, she was again harshly criticized.

In 1868, Elizabeth's book, Behind the Scenes: or Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White 
House, was published. In her book, using alternating chapters, she attempted to “place Mrs. Lincoln in a better light before the world,” while also describing her own “rise from slavery to [being] a middle-class businesswomen.”

The publisher included letters from Mrs. Lincoln to Elizabeth, and instead of being viewed as a personal narrative giving insight into history, as she had intended, Elizabeth was stunned to find her memoir viewed as a tell-all by the hired help. It has been suggested the Mary’s son, Robert, who had his mother committed to an asylum in 1875, played a part in the negative backlash over the book.

Elizabeth Keckley died in 1907, a resident of the National Home for Destitute Colored Women and Children in Washington, D.C.

Keckley

Titles in our collection:

Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly: The Remarkable Story of the Friendship Between a First Lady and a Former Slave by Jennifer Fleischner

Mary Lincoln's Dressmaker: Elizabeth Keckley's Remarkable Rise From Slave to White House Confidante by Becky Rutberg

Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker: A Novel by Jennifer Chiaverini


From the county:

Behind the Scenes: or Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House by Elizabeth Keckley

Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker: The Unlikely Friendship of Elizabeth Keckley & Mary Todd Lincoln by Lynda Jones

Epic Lives: One Hundred Black Women Who Made a Difference from Visible Ink Press

An Unlikely Friendship: A Novel of Mary Todd Lincoln and Elizabeth Keckley by Ann Rinaldi

So Our Children Can Soar

Rosa Parks's courageous action that December evening wasn't the first of its kind.

The story is a famous one. On December 1, 1955, Parks was riding a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, on her way home from her job as a seamstress. As the bus began to fill, Parks and three other African American passengers were ordered by bus driver James F. Blake to surrender their seats to white passengers. The other three African American passengers eventually got up. Making an instantaneous decision that she will no longer tolerate the discrimination, Rosa Parks remained seated. (Later, Parks would explain that this was not her first encounter with Blake -- he once made her get off the bus and re-enter through the rear door instead.)

Parks was arrested that day for her refusal to vacate her seat for a white man (a crime at the time under the "Jim Crow" segregation laws). But as the story of her courage spread, others were inspired to follow her example. A group of civil rights activities called the Montgomery Improvement Association organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott. (The leader of the boycott? A young Baptist minister, new to the area, by the name of Martin Luther King, Jr.) Passengers stayed off the buses in droves, choosing to walk, carpool, or bike-ride instead -- and with African Americans comprising nearly 75 percent of the riders in the Montgomery area, the bus company feels the effects. The number of buses in the city was cut, while fare prices were raised. And after 381 days, the boycott was ended -- when the Supreme Court ruled Montgomery's segregation laws to be unconstitutional.

Although best remembered for this act of courage, this was by no means Parks's only contribution to the civil rights movement -- or even her first. Rosa and her husband, Raymond Parks, were active members of their local NAACP chapter for many years before the incident in Montgomery. Later in life, Parks would go on to co-found the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development (an organization which aims to target the youth who might be overlooked by other program opportunities, motivating and directing them to reach their full potential). She'd receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996 from President Bill Clinton for her lifetime of work, and was awarded a Congressional Gold Medal in 1999.

Parks's 99th birthday would have been this February 4th (she passed away in 2005). But her myriad accomplishments -- best remembered in that iconic act of courage in 1955 -- ensures that her legacy lives on. She was and always will be rightly recognized as the "mother of the modern day civil rights movement."


For more on Rosa Parks:

- Rosa Parks Biography - Academy of Achievement

- Biography of Rosa Louise Parks - from the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development

- Rosa Parks Bus - The Story Behind the Bus

- Rosa Parks Refuses to Give Up Her Seat - How Rosa Parks Fought for Civil Rights (from Scholastic for younger readers)


From our Library's Collection:

- Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story - by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

- Rosa Parks: a Life - by Douglas Brinkley.

- Our Children Can Soar: A Celebration of Rosa, Barack, and the Pioneers of Change - by Michelle Cook.



-- Post by Ms. B