Araminta "Minty" Ross, who was later known as Harriet Tubman, was born enslaved around 1820. She died in 1913. As a child, Tubman suffered from the brutality and inhumanity of slavery. When she was five years old, she could not sleep during the night because she had to care for a baby. If the child cried, Harriet would be beaten. She was also forced to check muskrat traps in rivers, sometimes even in freezing weather. When she was a teen, a slave owner threw a weight at a man, but it hit Tubman in the head. The injury from this assault caused her to suffer from migraine headaches and uncontrolled sleeping spells. However, after this horrific event, Tubman also began to have what she called, visions from God showing her how to escape slavery. Eventually, Harriet not only
achieved freedom, but she returned several to slave plantations to free other people including members of her family. Some historians believe that Tubman helped to emancipate at least 300 people. Amazingly, Tubman worked as a nurse, scout, and spy during the Civil War. This educational video is just a snippet of Tubman’s legacy of courage, resilience, sacrifice, and selflessness. “I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can't say — I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.”—Harriet Tubman (1869)