Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, we're going on tour in eighteen and where
Speaker 1: are we going? On April four, we're going to be
Speaker 1: in Boston at the Wilburg. You can get tickets at
Speaker 1: the Wilber dot com, Chuck. And then on April five,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be in d C at the Lincoln Theater
Speaker 1: and you can get tickets for that at ticket fly
Speaker 1: that's right. And then we're going to two new cities,
Speaker 1: right yep. On May we're gonna be in St. Louis.
Speaker 1: You can get tickets on Ticketmaster. And on May twenty three,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be in Cleveland and you can get tickets
Speaker 1: there at playhouse Square dot org. And then there's one more, Chuck,
Speaker 1: that's right. We're gonna wrap it up in Denver, specifically Inglewood,
Speaker 1: Colorado at the Gothic Theater on June and possibly adding
Speaker 1: a show on the twenty seven. Stay tuned for that, yep.
Speaker 1: And you can get ticks at a x S dot com.
Speaker 1: So come see us live. We'll have a good time.
Speaker 1: Come on out. Welcome to Stuff you should know from
Speaker 1: House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark and they're is Charles w Chuck Bryant,
Speaker 1: and there's Jerry over there, and this is stuff you
Speaker 1: should know in Black History month. Toda, how you doing? Man?
Speaker 1: I'm tired? Are you? You've been burning the candles at
Speaker 1: all three ends? Uh? I didn't know candles had three ends.
Speaker 1: And look look at it when they work as hard
Speaker 1: as you check, they got three inns. So bright, How
Speaker 1: are you doing? You holding up at least? I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's TVD I Now you see these uh see these circles. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're a little pronounced. I wasn't gonna say anything, but
Speaker 1: that's fine. Yeah. I guess when that circles their half moons?
Speaker 1: Yeah there, um, well they're half moons the size of
Speaker 1: half dollars. A lot of people say circles into their
Speaker 1: eyes when they're not to circles. I wonder if they're
Speaker 1: just seeing the rest of it, like their mind is
Speaker 1: filling in the rest. Maybe they're all just insane seeing
Speaker 1: something we're not maybe so well. At any rate, we're
Speaker 1: all pulling for you. You need any super anything. Now,
Speaker 1: Jerry's got that as you can smell. Yeah, it's kind
Speaker 1: of nice. This this stage chairs. What is that? It's her? Well,
Speaker 1: she won't talk so right, She's just she's doing sign
Speaker 1: language for Ramen. I love Rahman. Don't you sure? Nothing
Speaker 1: perched up like Ramen except a really great history story.
Speaker 1: That's right, we're gonna do that today. Way to go
Speaker 1: choosing this one, Chuck, is this was this a request
Speaker 1: of yours or did just so happened it was on
Speaker 1: the site? No, I just you know, I've been wanting
Speaker 1: to cover more famous women in history, and um, obviously
Speaker 1: during Black History months, this is a perfect time to
Speaker 1: talk about Harriet Tubman. And this article points out and
Speaker 1: I thought very astutely like her legend in her her
Speaker 1: icon ship, I I kind of classic could chip Yes,
Speaker 1: uh is so great that? Um? I think sometimes a
Speaker 1: lot of people may not even know the nitty gritty
Speaker 1: details of her life, you know, I mean, I I know,
Speaker 1: I didn't. I I was, you know, raised in America
Speaker 1: in the seventies and eighties as a school kid into
Speaker 1: the mid nineties, we could even say, um, and I
Speaker 1: like I knew of Harriet Tubman. I was taught to
Speaker 1: honor and respect her for what she did as a
Speaker 1: conductor on the underground railroad. What I didn't know is
Speaker 1: that that was about a third of the reason why
Speaker 1: she's famous and legendary. Yeah. I mean the school lessons
Speaker 1: were shamefully short, because that's about all I learned was
Speaker 1: just about the underground railroad her her role in it
Speaker 1: to a very limited degree. Um that they taught us
Speaker 1: that it's not her role, and that was kind of it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But the fact that, like I mean, there's so much
Speaker 1: more to this woman's life. She just did so much.
Speaker 1: She packed so much life in, whether it was by
Speaker 1: her own accord or against her will, she just had
Speaker 1: a very long, full life. Um. And the fact that
Speaker 1: we know about the the life of a nineteenth mid
Speaker 1: nineteenth century black woman who was born a slave in Maryland,
Speaker 1: that we know this much about it really speaks volumes.
Speaker 1: I'm glad that there's this much out there, and it
Speaker 1: seems like there's more and more being added to it
Speaker 1: every day. Yeah, it definitely helps that. Uh. In the
Speaker 1: eighteen sixties, there was a very famous biography written by
Speaker 1: Sarah Hopkins Bradford, one of the earlier biographies in UM.
Speaker 1: Since then, we've learned some more stuff and cleaned up
Speaker 1: a bit of the truth from the legend. But you know,
Speaker 1: it only got better yeah. I mean, if it's just
Speaker 1: the stuff that is verifiable fact is still just astounding.
Speaker 1: It kind of makes me feel like a lump and
Speaker 1: a loser. Look, I'm not I'm not doing much with
Speaker 1: my life. Well, we're teaching people about Harriet tubban It lea,
Speaker 1: so it counts for something, I guess. All right, so
Speaker 1: you want to start at the beginning. Yeah, in the beginning,
Speaker 1: of course, because Harriet tubman Um was born. When she
Speaker 1: was born, there weren't great birth records for for black
Speaker 1: people in the United States at the time, so we
Speaker 1: don't know for sure when she was born. Um eighteen
Speaker 1: twenty five is what she has claimed on various documents
Speaker 1: later in life. But I've seen everywhere from eighteen eighty five,
Speaker 1: so somewhere in that range. Yeah, this article in how
Speaker 1: staff Work says eighteen twenty two. I've seen that in
Speaker 1: various places too, and that is shameful in and of itself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but again, like it's not like the people who were
Speaker 1: not keeping records on slave births at the time. We're like, well,
Speaker 1: this lady is actually going to grow up to be
Speaker 1: one of the most legendary women in American history, so
Speaker 1: we should probably note this. Um. The thing is is,
Speaker 1: even though they didn't, they didn't note her birth because
Speaker 1: they didn't realize how famous she was going to be.
Speaker 1: She started to make a name for herself pretty early
Speaker 1: on in life. Um. She had about five years to
Speaker 1: kind of be raised as a child before she was
Speaker 1: hired out as a basically an infant rocker. Her job
Speaker 1: was to stay up at night and rock and infant
Speaker 1: to make sure that the infant didn't cry. And every
Speaker 1: time the infant cried, she would, um get a lashing
Speaker 1: from what I understand. Yeah, and just reading through kind
Speaker 1: of her early life, it seems like, um, well let
Speaker 1: me couch that for one second. She was one of
Speaker 1: nine children born in like you said, in Maryland and
Speaker 1: Dorchester County unless they pronounce it Dorster Doyly Doyle County
Speaker 1: which is along the eastern shore, to Benjamin Ross and
Speaker 1: Harriet uh Rit Green h and her she was actually
Speaker 1: born are very beautiful name, are Amanta Ross. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: had no idea about that, did you know? And her
Speaker 1: parents called her Minty Minty Ross, which is just a
Speaker 1: very kind of cute nickname for a kid, it is.
Speaker 1: And she was actually a third generation slave in America.
Speaker 1: Her grandmother on her maternal side was named Modesty, and
Speaker 1: her family has done some research and have concluded that
Speaker 1: Modesty was almost certainly um from the Ashanti group and
Speaker 1: was stolen either from the Ivory Coast or Ghana and
Speaker 1: then was taken eventually to Maryland where she was owned
Speaker 1: by a guy named Athol Pattison. Is that right, Pattison?
Speaker 1: I think so. The thing about that and the reason
Speaker 1: why this guy really kind of figures into the story
Speaker 1: in a cringe worthy way. Athol Pattison um who then
Speaker 1: owned Harriet Tubman's grandmother and then mother, and then Harriet
Speaker 1: and her siblings because they were all from the same line.
Speaker 1: He had in his will that when when any of
Speaker 1: them turned forty five they were free, they were what
Speaker 1: was called manumitted. The problem is that he was dead,
Speaker 1: so he wasn't around to enforce his will, and that
Speaker 1: actually never happened. So even though on paper, legally Harriet Tubman,
Speaker 1: all of her siblings, her mother, and her grandmother all
Speaker 1: should have been manumitted whenever they hit age forty five,
Speaker 1: absolutely none of them were. Yeah, and her father did
Speaker 1: gain his freedom, but was still married to a woman
Speaker 1: who uh did not have her freedom. Uh. And you
Speaker 1: don't hear about this a lot in in the history
Speaker 1: books where families were um divided between free and owned, um,
Speaker 1: which makes a bad situation even worse, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I'd like to look into that because that kind
Speaker 1: of popped up here there and almost casually, you know,
Speaker 1: like without much explanation. So I wonder what that was like.
Speaker 1: Was it was it just like, you know, you both
Speaker 1: went to work and did basically the same labor, but
Speaker 1: one of you, um was paid for it. Uh? Was
Speaker 1: there like less like physical punishment or coercion? Like what
Speaker 1: was the distinction? Yeah, I'm not really sure, um, but
Speaker 1: like you are, you know, what I was setting up
Speaker 1: was after she worked as a as a childcare baby
Speaker 1: rocker of sorts and got whipped on the neck by
Speaker 1: the woman of the house every time her baby cried,
Speaker 1: which that's you know, that's a whole other thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and again she's five at the time, five years old. Um.
Speaker 1: She went on to work on the farm later on
Speaker 1: when she got a little older, and by all accounts, UM,
Speaker 1: for the rest of her her working life, her you know,
Speaker 1: as a slave, was much preferred working on the farm
Speaker 1: and basically like, I don't want to work for these
Speaker 1: white women. Um, they're worse than the men, right, or
Speaker 1: at least in her case. Plus also, I mean she
Speaker 1: was pretty able bodied. She supposedly was super muscular from
Speaker 1: doing um physical labor for so many years. It was
Speaker 1: pretty good at it. Five tall and um from what
Speaker 1: I could tell, just as strong as could be. Right,
Speaker 1: So um she the the owners of her family, um
Speaker 1: Ethyl Pattison's daughter and son in law. They were um
Speaker 1: kind of like Michael Fossbender's family in twelve years of
Speaker 1: slave They were not at all wealthy plantation owners, but
Speaker 1: they were just out of the social hierarchy at the
Speaker 1: time able to afford and keep slaves. But rather, since
Speaker 1: they didn't have a huge plantation for their slaves to
Speaker 1: work on, they would hire them out. That's how, um
Speaker 1: how Harry ended up like working at age five rocking babies,
Speaker 1: or she was hired out to go get muskrats out
Speaker 1: of traps and swamps and stuff like that. Just like basically,
Speaker 1: whatever somebody needed an extra hand for they would contact
Speaker 1: this family and the family would hire out their slaves
Speaker 1: just to make ends meet. Basically, Yeah, that's right, and
Speaker 1: I think most of her brother and sisters did the
Speaker 1: same thing from what I could tell. Uh. And you know,
Speaker 1: she grew up working and eventually they brought her inside
Speaker 1: his housemaid, even though she preferred to be outside. And
Speaker 1: once again, once she was inside, she would be whipped
Speaker 1: from the mistress of the house if her work in
Speaker 1: her dusting and her cooking and dishwashing was not adequate
Speaker 1: enough for her. Uh. And you know she suffered. It
Speaker 1: was just part of daily life basically until this incident
Speaker 1: as a teenager um really kind of changed things for her. Um.
Speaker 1: She was in a store, uh, and there was a
Speaker 1: fugitive slave that was I couldn't quite tells in the
Speaker 1: store or just trying to get out of the store.
Speaker 1: But her overseer went to confront this fugitive slave, and Harriet,
Speaker 1: I guess got the bug of trying to help a
Speaker 1: slave get away early on and literally got in this
Speaker 1: man's way to let this fugitive slave get away. He
Speaker 1: already had this weight, this iron that he was I
Speaker 1: guess trying to swing and throw at this fugitive slave,
Speaker 1: and he end up hitting Harriet in the head uh
Speaker 1: and caused a really severe head injury to her. Yeah.
Speaker 1: For the rest of her life. She had a traumatic
Speaker 1: brain injury, because I mean, getting hit in the head
Speaker 1: with a two pound weight, that's gonna that's bad enough.
Speaker 1: But the fact that's happening in the middle of the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century and there's basically nothing they can do for
Speaker 1: you medically, that yeah, you know, they didn't exactly send
Speaker 1: her to the best hospital in town. So she as
Speaker 1: a result of that brain injury, it's been later diagnosed
Speaker 1: that she developed narcolepsy cataplexy. UM. They called it at
Speaker 1: the time sleeping sickness. But she developed this um, this
Speaker 1: thing where she would just fall asleep out of nowhere.
Speaker 1: No matter what she was doing, she would just fall
Speaker 1: dead asleep and would stay that way for hours sometimes
Speaker 1: and could could not be roused, Like you could not
Speaker 1: wake her up at the time. And then during these periods, UM,
Speaker 1: she said that she would have very vivid, like religious dreams,
Speaker 1: and UM, they kind of attribute her super religiousness. I
Speaker 1: guess you would call it that that really she carried
Speaker 1: throughout her life kind of came from these dreams. She
Speaker 1: was an extremely devout religious person, and UM, a lot
Speaker 1: of it was this idea that she was being kind
Speaker 1: of personally guided by God through her life thanks to
Speaker 1: those dreams, right and this UM that anarcalypse here. The
Speaker 1: repercussions from being hit in the head like that did
Speaker 1: not serve her well in her life as a slave either,
Speaker 1: as you can imagine, UM, her overseers did not. UM.
Speaker 1: They were not sympathetic to the fact that she was
Speaker 1: injured and could not be roused. Uh you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. Yeah, No, she was like recovering from her
Speaker 1: head injury, still in They were trying to sell her
Speaker 1: but couldn't find any buyers. And then I also is
Speaker 1: kind of UM pointed to as one of the driving
Speaker 1: forces for what made her escape finally when she's like,
Speaker 1: I'm out of here. She was very worried about being
Speaker 1: sold off and separated from her family. So she would
Speaker 1: have rather had control of the situation and separated herself
Speaker 1: from her family. She could come back if she needed to.
Speaker 1: So she was worried about being sold off, um, because
Speaker 1: she just couldn't work like the others anymore. And she
Speaker 1: took off an eighteen March eighteen forty nine for the
Speaker 1: first time she escaped. Yeah, and she was married by
Speaker 1: this point. In eighteen forty four, she married a freeman
Speaker 1: named John Tubman Uh and the marriage wouldn't last long,
Speaker 1: but she did keep that name and then began, and
Speaker 1: I'm not sure why, but began using her mother's first name,
Speaker 1: which was Harriet. So that's how she became Harriet Tubman Uh.
Speaker 1: And her husband refused to go basically when she said,
Speaker 1: I'm getting out of here, so she got her brother's
Speaker 1: been in her Henry to run away with her. UM.
Speaker 1: After a couple of weeks on the lamb uh Ben
Speaker 1: in Henry. You know, it was a scary life out
Speaker 1: there as a fugitive slave. UM. And they said, you
Speaker 1: know what, I'm gonna go back, and she said, uh, Well,
Speaker 1: she went back with them initially, but then said you
Speaker 1: know what, I'm I'm out of here. And thence time
Speaker 1: she went all by herself. Yeah. So the following September,
Speaker 1: September seventy nine, she left again by herself, and she um.
Speaker 1: Basically it was a rehearsal for what she would do
Speaker 1: later on as a conductor on the underground railroad. She
Speaker 1: traveled at night. She used the North Star as a guide. UM.
Speaker 1: She stayed during the day with Quaker families who were
Speaker 1: abolitionists that would hide her um under under the threat
Speaker 1: of persecution and prosecution. I should say this is a
Speaker 1: teen forty nine, so at the time the laws weren't
Speaker 1: quite a strict but as we'll see, they definitely got stricter,
Speaker 1: but it was still like you could, you know, go
Speaker 1: to jail or get in trouble for housing a fugitive
Speaker 1: slave to these people were definitely putting their next on
Speaker 1: the line to help her, And eventually she made her
Speaker 1: way through Delaware and into Pennsylvania, which was a free state,
Speaker 1: um and I don't know if it was ever a
Speaker 1: slate state. I think it was probably founded as a
Speaker 1: free state. And when she got into Pennsylvania, she compared
Speaker 1: it to to showing up in heaven. Basically, Yeah, the
Speaker 1: sun came like gold through the trees and over the fields,
Speaker 1: and I felt like I was in heaven, is the
Speaker 1: direct quote, which is just a wonderful, wonderful thing to say.
Speaker 1: And like, I can't imagine the feeling after being on
Speaker 1: her own. Her husband wouldn't come, her brothers went back
Speaker 1: to be so brave uh to go on her own,
Speaker 1: although she did get help along the way, uh, and
Speaker 1: to finally reach Pennsylvania. Man, It's just unbelievable. So the
Speaker 1: thing is, though, is she apparently always said later in life,
Speaker 1: and a lot of this, we should say, is from
Speaker 1: that biography of her um from Sarah Hopkins Bradford, which
Speaker 1: was contemporary. It was done while she was alive in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty nine, so this is her telling her own story.
Speaker 1: But she said basically right out of the gate, you know,
Speaker 1: she was glad to be in Pennsylvania, but there was
Speaker 1: a part of her missing, like she left her family behind.
Speaker 1: Her husband was still back there. She never had kids. Uh,
Speaker 1: she never gave birth to a kid, but later on
Speaker 1: she would adopt a kid. But she had like nieces
Speaker 1: and nephews there, um, and she just felt like her
Speaker 1: her family was back there and they needed to be
Speaker 1: free as well. So she resolved basically from the outset
Speaker 1: to get them whenever she could. And that's a good
Speaker 1: place to take a break. I thought so too, because
Speaker 1: it sets up her work on the underground railroad and
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that right after this, all right, Chuck,
Speaker 1: So we're back eighteen forty nine, and uh, late eighteen
Speaker 1: forty nine, Harriet Tubman has escaped and made it to Pennsylvania. Um,
Speaker 1: and she settled in Philadelphia. She got work as a housekeeper,
Speaker 1: a cook, and she was getting paid now for doing labor,
Speaker 1: which was totally novel to her from what I can tell.
Speaker 1: And what she did with this money rather than like
Speaker 1: go buy some nice stuff or have a ham dinner
Speaker 1: or do whatever with it, she saved it to fund
Speaker 1: her trip back into the slaved states, into Maryland below
Speaker 1: the Mason Dixon line, to retrieve her family. That's what
Speaker 1: she did with her me. Yes, she didn't even get
Speaker 1: Eagles tickets and it would, uh, and it would it
Speaker 1: would actually basically that's the that's the basis of what
Speaker 1: she did with their money for the rest of her
Speaker 1: working life, which is to say the rest of her life.
Speaker 1: She worked her whole life to make ends meet, and
Speaker 1: most of the time it was because she could can
Speaker 1: she could support herself, but she was also supporting other
Speaker 1: people as well, or trying to help other other slaves escape. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the underground Railroad, Um, we should probably do a
Speaker 1: full episode on that at some point, But oh, my friend,
Speaker 1: we did, did we? June two thousand and eleven? Well, no, wonder,
Speaker 1: I don't remember that. It was a good one I
Speaker 1: was six years ago. That was good. Well, we got
Speaker 1: to bring it out for s Y s K select
Speaker 1: for sure. In fact, maybe we should do that this month.
Speaker 1: Let's do it so I do remember now. It was
Speaker 1: a good one. It was. But the underground railroad was
Speaker 1: a it was. It worked differently depending on who you are.
Speaker 1: There was not one like growing up as a kid
Speaker 1: always thought it was some um direct line. That was.
Speaker 1: They always used the same path. But the underground railroad
Speaker 1: depending on who you were as a conductor, which is
Speaker 1: what they called them, uh, you had your own connections basically,
Speaker 1: and and like you said earlier, sometimes they were these
Speaker 1: Quaker families, but um they were always friendlies who would
Speaker 1: help put you up and guide you from spot to
Speaker 1: spot along the way. Um. Harriet Tubman ended up using
Speaker 1: because she knew these um this land along the coast.
Speaker 1: She would go the route that she knew best as
Speaker 1: a friendly area. And they had all these ways of
Speaker 1: communicating in front of their UH owners and their overseers.
Speaker 1: A lot of times through song. They would use religious
Speaker 1: passages and sing things uh, sing these biblical songs that
Speaker 1: had all these secret messages in it. And of course
Speaker 1: all the while the overseers have no idea that they're
Speaker 1: actually sending secret mets. It just a one in there. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: one of them, Chuck was um there that they were
Speaker 1: headed to Canaan, which is meaning you're heading to the
Speaker 1: afterlife heaven, I guess. And what that actually meant in
Speaker 1: code for the slaves who were preparing to escape was
Speaker 1: that they were heading towards Canada, which was about as
Speaker 1: free as it gets, it turns out. Yeah. Uh, she
Speaker 1: would go Uh generally during the fall and during the
Speaker 1: spring because the days were shorter and the weather was
Speaker 1: a little more friendly. Um, she would she would leave
Speaker 1: on a Saturday because Sunday the was a day of
Speaker 1: rest for the owner, and they wouldn't find out until
Speaker 1: Monday morning, and it wouldn't be posted and published till Monday. Uh,
Speaker 1: probably not even Monday morning, you know, because it's not
Speaker 1: like it was hot off the presses. It would probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't even get until later on Monday. Right. Well, if
Speaker 1: they only published the slave notices once a week, that
Speaker 1: means that the ones that came in on Monday wouldn't
Speaker 1: get published to the following Monday. So we give them
Speaker 1: like a full week of of time to escape. Oh
Speaker 1: did they only publish on Monday? That's what I got.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, I didn't see that, So yeah, so she
Speaker 1: was she was a pretty sharp tack. She would also
Speaker 1: say I'm gonna meet you here. She would pass information
Speaker 1: along to the slaves who were preparing to escape that
Speaker 1: she was going to conduct where to meet, and it
Speaker 1: was um invariably several miles away from where they lived,
Speaker 1: so that it would become very clear if they had
Speaker 1: been followed by the time they met up with her.
Speaker 1: She also kept a pistol very famously with her, not
Speaker 1: not just to protect herself for the people that she
Speaker 1: was conducting, but also to let the people she was
Speaker 1: conducting know that if they decided they were going to
Speaker 1: turn back, she was going to shoot him because she
Speaker 1: just couldn't risk them giving them up and betraying the
Speaker 1: rest of the group. So it was once you were
Speaker 1: on on the underground railroad with Harriet Tubman, there was
Speaker 1: no going back. You were going on until you reached
Speaker 1: a free state or were captured. It was one of
Speaker 1: those two. The Tubman train goes in one direction. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's what that was what she put on her cards,
Speaker 1: that's right, and T shirts Actually I think she had
Speaker 1: t shirts too. All right, So she's like you said,
Speaker 1: she doesn't make a trip. She makes trip after trip
Speaker 1: after trip. Uh. There's a lot of speculation on exactly
Speaker 1: how many people I believe in the original biography, and
Speaker 1: the number you will hear a lot is three hundred.
Speaker 1: But they have done some investigating since then. Uh. And
Speaker 1: some people have said it may have been like seventy people,
Speaker 1: with another seventy that she kind of trained and taught
Speaker 1: and empowered to leave. Um. But either way, it's a
Speaker 1: lot of folks. Yeah, for sure, it's thirteen trips too.
Speaker 1: I mean, like that's that's thirteen trips back to where
Speaker 1: she was considered a fugitive slave and eventually grow had
Speaker 1: a pretty sizeable bounty on her head. I saw forty
Speaker 1: thou dollars, which is about a million dollars in today's money,
Speaker 1: which means that there were there was a million dollars
Speaker 1: for her capture and she still never got caught. People
Speaker 1: still never got her from Philadelphia. Um, because just as
Speaker 1: she would steal down to the below the Mason Dixon line,
Speaker 1: slave steelers would steal up above the Mason Dixon line
Speaker 1: and capture slaves and bring them back, especially ones that
Speaker 1: had a huge bounty on their head. So the fact
Speaker 1: that she had never been captured, and that she kept
Speaker 1: going down below the Mason Dixon line, so supposedly at
Speaker 1: one point she she had to go through her old
Speaker 1: town where she was where she had escaped from back
Speaker 1: in eighteen forty nine. And the fact that she kept
Speaker 1: doing the stuff and her legend grew like she just
Speaker 1: became well legend like and in her own time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is um. After eighteen fifty you kind of
Speaker 1: hinted that things got even worse. That's when they passed
Speaker 1: Congress past the Fugitive Slave Act, and this basically required
Speaker 1: all citizens to assist in recapturing fugitive slaves. Um, it's
Speaker 1: not like you had to work full time doing this,
Speaker 1: but if you knew about it and you didn't do
Speaker 1: something to make it happen, then you were then liable.
Speaker 1: So basically everybody was, uh, unless you know, they were
Speaker 1: confirmed friendly, everybody was after them, right for sure. And
Speaker 1: the that that Fugitive Slave Act, in addition to um, well,
Speaker 1: it did a lot of things right So before it
Speaker 1: was kind of like if you were in a northern
Speaker 1: free state, the fugitive slave laws didn't really apply to
Speaker 1: you because you were in a free state. The fact
Speaker 1: that that Fugitive Slave Act made it a federal law.
Speaker 1: Now everybody in the US was subject to these this
Speaker 1: Fugitive Slave Act, and it was one of those laws
Speaker 1: where you could be punished for not doing anything like
Speaker 1: just looking the other way. You could end up in
Speaker 1: jail for six months and be fined a thousand dollars UM.
Speaker 1: So anybody who was already helping on the underground railroad
Speaker 1: was at risk before, but now they were really at
Speaker 1: even more substantial risk after eighteen fifty, and as a result,
Speaker 1: the end of the underground railroad got pushed further up
Speaker 1: from Pennsylvania up to New York all the way up
Speaker 1: to Canada. That was the end of the line for
Speaker 1: the underground railroad after eighteen fifty. Yeah. So as this
Speaker 1: is going on, as she is over a decade going
Speaker 1: back and forth down the eastern shore of Maryland freeing slaves,
Speaker 1: she is also um successfully speaking at abolitionist fundraising meetings. Um.
Speaker 1: She was well known and they would ask you know
Speaker 1: she was. She was a public speaker. UM. Obviously very
Speaker 1: much on the download because she was a super big
Speaker 1: target for the slave catchers. Like you were saying, but uh,
Speaker 1: this only just like enriched her legend that she would
Speaker 1: take breaks from rescuing slaves to go speak at a
Speaker 1: at a fundraising meeting. Yeah. And one of the reasons
Speaker 1: she was doing that in the first place was to
Speaker 1: make money to fund her work on the underground railroad. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That's pretty impressive. Yeah, absolutely, because I mean, I imagine
Speaker 1: the most of those families were doing this for nothing,
Speaker 1: but I imagine they probably had to pay people off
Speaker 1: along the way. Yeah, especially in Canada. Um, apparently you
Speaker 1: could bribe the border guards pretty easily to say, oh,
Speaker 1: you're visiting, huh, well, enjoy your time in Canada, and right,
Speaker 1: and people would settle right across the the Niagara River
Speaker 1: and St. Catherine's, Ontario is where a lot of them
Speaker 1: ended up. Alright. So, in eighteen sixty, a very very
Speaker 1: famous incident, and this is one of the most one
Speaker 1: of the most well documented stories of the time. Um.
Speaker 1: There this was in Troy, New York, and there was
Speaker 1: a captured slave named Charles Noll and he that was
Speaker 1: his real name. I can't remember the name that he
Speaker 1: had been given, but his real name was Charles Noll.
Speaker 1: They were trying to get him back to Virginia after
Speaker 1: he had been captured as a fugitive, and everybody knew
Speaker 1: about it, and uh, including Harriet Tubman. So she just
Speaker 1: got ased herself as a little old lady. Um and
Speaker 1: if you've seen pictures of her, almost all of them
Speaker 1: are as a little old lady. It's kind of hard
Speaker 1: to picture her as a young woman. But she dressed
Speaker 1: herself up as the little old lady that she would
Speaker 1: become in photos. She slipped into a building, a government building,
Speaker 1: in disguise, and then basically gave the signal to all
Speaker 1: of these people in town who mobbed as soon as
Speaker 1: Unal was brought out under the streets. They basically just
Speaker 1: mobbed him and took him away. Yes, she won't get
Speaker 1: him a right, No, she went swarm swarm, but it worked,
Speaker 1: and I guess they just had enough enough people to
Speaker 1: overpower him and whisked him away on a riverboat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and these were federal marshals that they overpowered. Yeah, Like
Speaker 1: it was like, yeah, we're we'll be taking this guy
Speaker 1: from you. Amazing. That was in eighteen sixty, he said, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was the same year I believe that she did
Speaker 1: her last trip on the underground railroad. Her second to
Speaker 1: last trip was her parents, who were very elderly at
Speaker 1: the time, but they ended up settling in St. Catherine's,
Speaker 1: Ontario at first, and then her mother was like, it's
Speaker 1: too cold here, so Harriet moved them down to Auburn,
Speaker 1: New York, to upstate New York where the winters are
Speaker 1: nice and right, yeah, exactly, almost muggy, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: but that so that was her penultimate trip on the
Speaker 1: underground roroad. The last one she went to go get
Speaker 1: her sister Rachel. She had been trying to reach for
Speaker 1: a decade, and she went back in eighteen sixty to
Speaker 1: get her and found that Rachel had died. Actually, so
Speaker 1: she um, she ended up taking a family that was
Speaker 1: prepared to leave. Um, the Annals. Did you read about them? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean Harriet Tubman was not one to waste a
Speaker 1: trip down there. As sad as she was about her sister.
Speaker 1: She's like, all right, let's I'll take you guys. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the Annals family was from and I can tell
Speaker 1: a younger couple with an infant child, and um, Harriet
Speaker 1: was like, we're gonna have the dope up the baby
Speaker 1: because we can't have that baby crying. So I just
Speaker 1: happened to have some tincture of opium and we'll give
Speaker 1: the baby some of that. So they kept the baby
Speaker 1: pretty high on this trip to make sure it didn't
Speaker 1: cry and give away their their position. And that was
Speaker 1: her last one. Eight sixty. Yeah, and so like we said,
Speaker 1: they relocated from Canada to Auburn, New York. And um,
Speaker 1: she bought, she bought land. She was a landowner, uh
Speaker 1: remarkably in the eighteen fifties. Uh in Auburn. She bought
Speaker 1: seven acres of land at a very friendly price from
Speaker 1: William Seward right, and he was the guy who bought
Speaker 1: Alaska later, that's right. So yeah, so she's a landowner now,
Speaker 1: which is pretty significant. Like you're saying, should we take
Speaker 1: another break, I think we shall, all right, we'll we'll
Speaker 1: finish up with um geez the rest of our life,
Speaker 1: which was also remarkable. So it took the end of
Speaker 1: that underground railroad that was basically where my study as
Speaker 1: a younger lad of um Harriet Tubman left off the
Speaker 1: rest of our I had no idea about, did you M.
Speaker 1: I had heard things here and there but I for
Speaker 1: sure was not taught this in elementary or high school.
Speaker 1: Well to lay it on them, Well, the Civil War
Speaker 1: breaks out in eighteen sixty one, and the governor of Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: John A. Andrew was very much an abolitionist, and Tubbin
Speaker 1: was a friend of his, and he said, you know what,
Speaker 1: who do I know that is super stealthy and super
Speaker 1: sneaky and has a neck for uh making her way
Speaker 1: around the woods without attracting attention, and can get information
Speaker 1: from us about the Confederate Army. And how about my
Speaker 1: little buddy, Harriet Tubman. Yeah, and so she became a spy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The governor of Massachusetts tapped her to become a spy
Speaker 1: for the Union Army. So he paid for her passage
Speaker 1: down to Hilton Head, I believe, South Carolina, and she
Speaker 1: um was enlisted officially under the cover story that she
Speaker 1: was there to um give out like blankets and food
Speaker 1: and clothing to the slaves that were escaping from in
Speaker 1: the amidst the chaos of war. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: slaves that were making their way to Union camps and
Speaker 1: finding shelter Um there and her role supposedly was to
Speaker 1: make sure that they were cared for that. Like I said,
Speaker 1: that was just a cover story. What she was actually
Speaker 1: really there to do was to basically lead an intelligence
Speaker 1: gathering scouting group, basically assemble a guerrilla scouting special forces
Speaker 1: group behind enemy lines in South Carolina. And that's what
Speaker 1: she did. Yeah. I wonder if any of the Union
Speaker 1: soldiers when she showed up and said, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: here to give out blankets and stuff, They're like, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: I know who you are, Right, we see those you
Speaker 1: see those muscles. Yeah, you're not giving up blankets. We
Speaker 1: know your your track record. Uh. So specifically she worked,
Speaker 1: it seems like most often with African American troops once
Speaker 1: Lincoln authorized African American troops for the Union Army in
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty two. She would go ahead of these teams
Speaker 1: and do everything from try and get information on Confederate
Speaker 1: positions and armaments to uh to working with these guys.
Speaker 1: In June sixty three, it's a really cool story, she
Speaker 1: accompanied Union Colonel James montgom Re up the Kambahi River
Speaker 1: and this was in South Carolina and they were going
Speaker 1: to conduct a raid. And so what they found out
Speaker 1: was there all these minds that had been set up
Speaker 1: uh by uh were they buy slaves or by um So,
Speaker 1: under the direction of the Confederates, they had slaves go
Speaker 1: set minds out in the river. And so she went
Speaker 1: and found the slaves who had set the minds there
Speaker 1: so they could tell her where it was. And that
Speaker 1: must have been nerve wracking. It was because not only
Speaker 1: did she go find out where it was, so that
Speaker 1: step one, which is huge, she went and got the
Speaker 1: intail where the minds were. She was in charge of
Speaker 1: leading directing the Union ships around these mines. So she
Speaker 1: I'm sure she has had her fingers across the whole time.
Speaker 1: But prior to that, even she had also led a
Speaker 1: raid of um this the scouts that she had assembled
Speaker 1: to gather intel and to get supplies behind Confederate lines
Speaker 1: from some sort of Confederate encampment. And that made her
Speaker 1: the first women woman in US history to command an
Speaker 1: expedition force in wartime. Yeah, but sadly, for all her efforts,
Speaker 1: she was never given military pension like she should have
Speaker 1: a federally that is no, so that's like a whole
Speaker 1: that's a whole other can of worms. Right, So she
Speaker 1: she successfully makes it through the Civil War um and
Speaker 1: starting right. I think in eighteen sixty five she applied
Speaker 1: for benefits, right um, she asked for something like thirty
Speaker 1: dollars a month. Even though scouts in the Civil War
Speaker 1: were paid sixty dollars a month and regular soldiers were
Speaker 1: given a pension of fifteen dollars a month, she asked
Speaker 1: for thirty um and she was denied. Officially, the reason
Speaker 1: she was denied was because there was no documentation. Remember, like,
Speaker 1: officially her cover story was that she was handing out
Speaker 1: blankets and all that. And that first petition for a
Speaker 1: pension started a thirty four year quest to finally get
Speaker 1: recognition in the form of a pension from the federal
Speaker 1: government for the amazing amount of stuff she did in
Speaker 1: the Civil War. And finally they despite the fact that
Speaker 1: there were Cabinet members and congress people and governors who
Speaker 1: were personally involving themselves in this matter, trying to get
Speaker 1: this pushed through the pensions Bureau, was like, we can't
Speaker 1: do it. If we give it to her, it's going
Speaker 1: to open it up for all these other people. So
Speaker 1: it just so happens that she she married a Civil
Speaker 1: War veteran um who was much younger than her and
Speaker 1: he when he died, she started collecting a pension. So
Speaker 1: she got a pension, not because of all of the
Speaker 1: stuff she did in the war. She got a pension
Speaker 1: because she married a Civil War veteran, a man who died,
Speaker 1: and she got a widows pension instead. Yeah, well, she
Speaker 1: would eventually go getting her own pension, but not for
Speaker 1: the work she does a spy, but for work she
Speaker 1: does an army nurse. Right, So they uped it finally
Speaker 1: in eight thirty four years after she applied from I
Speaker 1: think twelve dollars a month to now eight dollars a
Speaker 1: month to twenty dollars a month was what she got
Speaker 1: for the rest of her life. Yeah, and guess guess
Speaker 1: who she spent that money on Philadelphia Eagles tickets. No,
Speaker 1: she's she's spent it to open up a home. Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: she she bought some more property adjacent to her own
Speaker 1: property there in Auburn, New York, and she started home
Speaker 1: for elderly African American people. And seven years after that,
Speaker 1: she you know, she was kind of getting up in
Speaker 1: age by that point, so she turned the property over
Speaker 1: to the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church where she went
Speaker 1: uh and said you guys, can you please still run
Speaker 1: this thing? They said, no problem, And she lived next
Speaker 1: door to it until she got old enough to where
Speaker 1: she needed to be in the home that she founded,
Speaker 1: and that is where she finally passed away in nineteen thirteen. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The family legend is that on the day she died,
Speaker 1: she had been bedridden for a while, but she suddenly
Speaker 1: regained her strength and you know, got up out of
Speaker 1: bed with some help and ate some food and went
Speaker 1: around and the just kind of shuffled around from room
Speaker 1: to room, just taking in the house. Uh, and then
Speaker 1: went back to bed and died. Man. It's just pretty neat. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And in between that time, when she was living in
Speaker 1: upstate New York, she uh, you know, she farmed and
Speaker 1: she uh, by all accounts, was like a was a
Speaker 1: great farmer and lived off the land. Uh. And you know,
Speaker 1: the life was okay for her. But she also had
Speaker 1: had a lot of you know, fresh out off of
Speaker 1: the Civil War, had a lot of rude awakenings. It's
Speaker 1: not like things instantaneously changed, uh for African Americans in
Speaker 1: the United States. UM. One case, in fact, she was
Speaker 1: on a train and she had what's called the soldiers
Speaker 1: pass which she could, you know, ride the rails for
Speaker 1: free as a soldier. And she legitimately got this pass
Speaker 1: and the train conductor wouldn't accept it. Uh. She got
Speaker 1: into an argument with them, and then he got together
Speaker 1: with other passengers and physically threw her into the baggage car,
Speaker 1: which broke her arm, broke three ribs. She couldn't work
Speaker 1: for months, and you know, famous Harriet Tubman had basically
Speaker 1: was forced to be bedridden for a while except handouts
Speaker 1: from her neighbors just to keep her family fed because
Speaker 1: she had had her arm and ribs broken at the
Speaker 1: hands of a conductor and that horribly ironic. Yes, so
Speaker 1: that happened right after the Civil War, right, Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: So she was nursed back to health and and like
Speaker 1: you said, she made ends meet um farming, um selling.
Speaker 1: I think she was known for selling pies and root
Speaker 1: beer and gingerbread is what she sold, which is pretty
Speaker 1: happy stuff really if you think about it. I bet
Speaker 1: that was some good gingerbread and um she lived with
Speaker 1: her parents. Remember her mom complained ab out the weather
Speaker 1: in St. Catharines, Ontario. Um, so she moved them down
Speaker 1: to Auburn, New York, to her land and she cared
Speaker 1: for them. Uh. And she used some of the money
Speaker 1: to put one of her nephews, who she'd earlier helped
Speaker 1: escape from slavery through school. Uh. He studied to become
Speaker 1: a teacher and moved down to South Carolina and taught
Speaker 1: and he eventually became part of the reconstructionist legislature there. Um.
Speaker 1: She used her money pretty wisely. Yes, she opened the
Speaker 1: Old Folks Home. She did a lot of really great
Speaker 1: stuff from from the day she first got paid to
Speaker 1: the last day of her life. Yeah, she got married
Speaker 1: again too. She married a man Union Army veteran named
Speaker 1: Nelson Davis. Uh, twenty two years younger than her. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the guy she got the pension from. Right, and
Speaker 1: they married in eighteen sixty nine. And on her gravestone
Speaker 1: it says Harriet Tubman Davis. And Um. She ended up
Speaker 1: being buried with full military honors at four Hill Cemetery
Speaker 1: in Auburn, which is really really great. Uh. They commissioned
Speaker 1: a liberty ship, the s S. Harriet Tubman during World
Speaker 1: War Two. Um, she's been in Um. Well, they're developing
Speaker 1: a couple of movies right now, one with Viola Davis,
Speaker 1: which you know she's fantastic, so that should be good.
Speaker 1: What else? National Historic Landmarks from where she lived? Um,
Speaker 1: National Register of Historic Places. And then finally, in a
Speaker 1: couple of years ago, President Obama and his administration said,
Speaker 1: you know what, we are going to take Andrew Jackson
Speaker 1: off the twenty dollar bill and we're gonna put Harriet
Speaker 1: Tubman on it. Uh. And it's hard to tell if
Speaker 1: that's still an active thing, because all we know right
Speaker 1: now is current Treasury Secretary Steve Nuncheon UM basically is
Speaker 1: declining comment right now and saying we got a lot
Speaker 1: of other stuff to focus on. I saw follow up
Speaker 1: two weeks later. That's the latest I saw, but two
Speaker 1: weeks after he initially said that UM, they were proceeding,
Speaker 1: that it was basically going through, but that it wouldn't
Speaker 1: be out until after because I think the ten dollar
Speaker 1: bill and then the five dollar bill were scheduled to
Speaker 1: be updated first, and then the twenty dollar bill. So
Speaker 1: she's in the queue. She's in the queue, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: And she that won't be the first time she's appeared
Speaker 1: on anything. She was UM on a stamp, I believe
Speaker 1: back in nineteen seventy nine. I think she might have
Speaker 1: been the first African American woman on a stamp. YEP,
Speaker 1: it's pretty pretty significant. But her being on currency is
Speaker 1: just that's just a sea change in America and wanted
Speaker 1: to be proud of for sure. Um, so what else? Man?
Speaker 1: You got anything else on her? I got nothing else.
Speaker 1: That's Harriet Tubman in a nutshell. God bless her. If
Speaker 1: you want to know more about Harriet Tubman, there's tons
Speaker 1: more stuff out there. There's actually really good site that
Speaker 1: we both used called I think Harriet dashed Codman dot org.
Speaker 1: Don't spell out. I think that was just me saying
Speaker 1: that they have a lot of really good information on there.
Speaker 1: You can look for this article on how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com by typing in the search bar too. And
Speaker 1: since I said search parts, time for listener mail? Uh,
Speaker 1: you know instead of listener mail today we need to
Speaker 1: shout out our CIVA team because we have not done
Speaker 1: that in a long time and now we've been kind
Speaker 1: of neglectful. So k I v a dot org slash
Speaker 1: team slash stuff you should know, or you can just
Speaker 1: go to Cuba and look up on the teams. UM
Speaker 1: many years ago, we started Freezy. Don't those of you
Speaker 1: who don't know. Kiva is a micro lending organization and
Speaker 1: website where you can um donate money and small amounts
Speaker 1: to entrepreneurs and business people all over the world who
Speaker 1: who don't have the means to to raise money themselves
Speaker 1: for their small businesses. And then you can re lend
Speaker 1: that money once they pay it back, or you can
Speaker 1: draw it out if you want to draw it out.
Speaker 1: So we started a team many years ago, UM, and
Speaker 1: I haven't looked in a while, and I was astonished.
Speaker 1: Have you seen what we've raised? All? Right, hold onto
Speaker 1: your hats the stuff you should know. Team has now
Speaker 1: raised four point seven million bucks. What how about that?
Speaker 1: That's amazing. That is a hundred and sixty nine thousand
Speaker 1: loans uh, nine thousand, nine hundred and twelve members. And
Speaker 1: just to give you guys an idea of how this works, UM,
Speaker 1: I put in and this was what was this eight
Speaker 1: eight or nine years ago? Put in three d and
Speaker 1: fifty bucks, uh, the only money I've ever put into it.
Speaker 1: And since then that money has been reloaned to the
Speaker 1: tune of twenty three hundred dollars over the years. So
Speaker 1: you can even put in fifty dollars and just keep
Speaker 1: reloaning that over the years and through all those eight years,
Speaker 1: I looked at my account today, I've only had forty
Speaker 1: two dollars in loss. Is that is not bad, not
Speaker 1: bad at all. So that's money that does not get
Speaker 1: paid back and it, as you can tell, that does
Speaker 1: not happen much. Yeah. Yeah, uh, And if you want
Speaker 1: to join our team, go to kiva dot org slash
Speaker 1: teams slash stuff you should know and uh that team
Speaker 1: is our team has led unofficially slash officially by Glenn
Speaker 1: and Sonja who keep things going pretty smoothly for us
Speaker 1: over there. So thanks again Glenn and Sonia for everything
Speaker 1: you've been doing all these years. Yeah. So I think
Speaker 1: a goal we can set right now. We always set
Speaker 1: money goals, but since we have nine thousand and twelve members,
Speaker 1: why don't we try and get to ten thousand members?
Speaker 1: And that is not much, that's like, you know, less
Speaker 1: than a hundred people signing onto the team, leaning a
Speaker 1: little bit of dough, let's do. Let's do so ten
Speaker 1: thousand members by the end by the summer, by June one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that should be easy. And one trillion dollars by June
Speaker 1: one as well. That would be great. And it's really cool.
Speaker 1: You can see if you go to your account, you
Speaker 1: can they have follow ups from people who you loan
Speaker 1: the money to, like real stories of what happened with
Speaker 1: your money. Uh, and they're always just great stories. And
Speaker 1: it's a really easy way if you have, um, you know,
Speaker 1: five cups of coffee worth of money laying around. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a donated Yeah. And if you want to know
Speaker 1: more about it, we've blogged about it extensively. So goes
Speaker 1: the Stuff you Should Know dot com and look up
Speaker 1: Kiva and it should bring up a bunch of posts
Speaker 1: and um for a good I think overview to just
Speaker 1: go listen to the micro lending episode from back in
Speaker 1: the day too. That's right. Well, Uh, if you want
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us, you can. You can
Speaker 1: do that. You can do it on Twitter at s
Speaker 1: Y s K podcast or at Josh M. Clark can
Speaker 1: do it on Facebook, Facebook dot com, slash stuff you
Speaker 1: Should Know or slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant. You can
Speaker 1: send all of us an email. The Stuff podcast at
Speaker 1: how Stuffworks dot com and has always joined us at
Speaker 1: our home on the web Stuff you Should Know com
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
Speaker 1: it how stuff works? Dot com mhm m