Elizabeth Ross Hayes

A portrait of Harriet Tubman is scheduled to replace that of Andrew Jackson on the front of the U.S. $20 bill in 2020. Sarah H. Bradford, who knew Tubman personally, wrote these scenes from Tubman’s extraordinary life in 1869.

The Harriet Tubman National Historical Park in Auburn, New York, was formally established on January 10, 2017, on the “the site where Tubman lived and worshiped in Auburn, New York, caring for family members and other formerly enslaved people seeking safe haven in the North.”

Note from Sue: I have also recorded a one-chapter version of Tubman’s life,  “Harriet Tubman, the Moses of her People,” excerpted from Unsung Heroes by Elizabeth Ross Hayes (1921). It is part of the LibriVox Short Nonfiction Collection, Vol. 043.

“She hid around among the slaves in their cabins.  She whispered to them thrilling stories of the free country, until even women with babies were getting ready to follow her back to the North.  After drugging their babies with paregoric and placing them in baskets which they carried on their arms, they set out with “Moses,” as they called her, for the free country.

They forded rivers, climbed mountains, went through the swamps, threaded the forests with their feet sore and often bleeding.  They traveled during the night and kept in hiding during the day.  One of the men fell by the wayside.  Harriet took out her pistol, and pointing it at his head, said “Dead men tell no tales; you go on or die!” He arose trembling and dragged along with the party until they reached the North.”