Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad

https://www.nps.gov/hatu/index.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Tubman_Underground_Railroad_National_Historical_Park Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park is located in Maryland. It commemorates the life of former slave Harriet Tubman, who became an activist in the Underground Railroad prior to the American Civil War. Harriet Tubman was a deeply spiritual woman who lived her ideals and dedicated her life to freedom. She is the Underground Railroad’s best known conductor and before the Civil War repeatedly risked her life to guide 70 enslaved people north to new lives of freedom. This new national historical park preserves the same landscapes that Tubman used to carry herself and others away from slavery. The Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center is located approximately 11 miles south of Cambridge, Maryland. From US 50, turn south on Route 16. Follow Route 16 to Church Creek about 7 miles; turn south on Route 335 / Golden Hill Road. Follow Route 335 about 4.5 miles, and the visitor center is on the right. Latitude/Longitude: 38.4445934, -76.1426984 Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center Operated in partnership with the Maryland Park Service, this visitor center considers the life and legacy of Harriet Tubman, born a slave here in Dorchester County, Maryland. Tubman escaped her condition of slavery and returned to Maryland to bring more than 70 relatives and friends to freedom using the Underground Railroad network. Experience the landscape that colored Tubman's early life, and explore exhibits and a film to learn more about her compelling story. Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Site Girl stands on a bridge overlooking the marshlands. Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Site Journeying toward Freedom and New Beginnings The Jacob Jackson home site is a landscape associated with Harriet Tubman's youth on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. In 1854, Jacob Jackson a free black man and friend of Harriet Tubman helped her to free her brothers from slavery. Jacob and Harriet were part of the White Marsh community of free and enslaved black families, many of whom worked to resist, in their own ways, entrenched systems of slavery and discrimination. A narrow canal of water passes through a marshy area of low vegetation, bordered by trees. National Park Getaway: Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park tells the story of how one person can fight injustice despite being born into the worst of circumstances. The visitor center and surrounding area help visitors appreciate Harriet Tubman’s courage, sacrifices, and enduring legacy. Reenactors portraying Harriet Tubman and the 54th U.S. Army Regiment Designing the Parks: Learning in Action The Designing the Parks program is not your typical internship. Each year since 2013, this program at the Olmsted Center for Landscape Preservation has introduced a cohort of college students and recent graduates to NPS design and planning professions through projects related to cultural landscape stewardship. In the internships, made possible by partner organizations, participants focus on an in-depth project that directly engages with a national park unit. A group of young people stand on forest trail and listen to two maintenance employees Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center Celebrates Grand Opening The National Park Service and the Maryland Park Service jointly dedicated and opened the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center in Church Creek, Maryland on March 10-12. The facility serves as the joint visitor center for the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park and the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad State Park. An older African American woman is dressed as Harriet Tubman. Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad In 1849 Harriet Tubman took her fate into her own hands and escaped slavery. Over approximately a decade, Tubman returned to Maryland to rescue about 70 more enslaved people including her family and friends. Tubman stands alongside her family members. The Niagara River: Between Slavery and Freedom Niagara Falls, one of the seven natural wonders of the world, is often thought of as awe-inspiring and a must-do tourist destination for people from all over the world. The power of Niagara Falls is more than the natural phenomenon of the Falls themselves, or the harnessing of the hydropower of the Niagara River, but importantly, the tension between slavery and freedom during the years of the Underground Railroad. Color postcard of a train crossing the suspension bridge at Niagara Falls Maryland: Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park Today considered a national hero, Tubman is best known for her role in assisting approximately 70 enslaved African Americans escape to freedom as a leading “conductor” of the Underground Railroad – a resistance movement based on self-liberation and flight. The Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park memorializes this legacy not through physical structures, but by instead through the landscape in Tubman’s native Dorchester County, Maryland. Harriet Tubman, full length portrait North Star to Freedom The National Park Service shares the stories of Harriet Tubman, the Underground Railroad, and the many brave Americans in the 1800s whose courageous actions led slaves to freedom and helped end the slavery era. This July as we celebrate our nation’s independence, the NPS reflects on the role the night sky played in the lives of these early Americans. Painting of escaping slaves on horseback, The Fugitive Slaves, Eastman Johnson Disability History: The NPS and Accessibility The National Park Service strives to make its parks, monuments, and historic sites available to all. Programs, services, and products, such as Braille alternatives of print material, sign language interpretation of tours, accessible camping sites and trails, ramps and elevators make parks more accessible. These are essential to allowing the public to fully enjoy NPS resources. exterior of a log cabin Re-Imagining Harriet Tubman A previously unknown photograph of Harriet Tubman depicting her as young and stylish, closer to what she would have looked like during her days as an operative of the Underground Railroad was acquired in 2017. 2019 marked the debut of the movie Harriet. Find out how this historical figure is being re-imagined as a historical superhero. Suffrage in 60 Seconds: African American Women and the Vote African American women often found themselves marginalized by both Black men and white women in the fight for equality. How did they ensure that their voices were heard? Ranger Titus has the story. Photo collage of several African American suffragists. Suffrage in 60 Seconds logo Series: Disability History: An Overview Disability History: An Overview brings attention to some of the many disability stories interwoven across the National Park Service’s 400+ units and its programs. “Disability stories” refer to the array of experiences by, from, and about people with disabilities represented across our nation. People with disabilities are the largest minority in the United States, but their stories often remain untold. Statue of FDR in his wheelchair Series: Suffrage in Sixty Seconds When was the last time you voted? For the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution enfranchising women, park rangers at the Belmont-Paul Women's Equality National Monument created these one-minute videos that highlight suffrage subjects and the heroes who made woman suffrage a reality—including those women who continued the fight for full enfranchisement beyond 1920. Alice Paul raises glass above ratification banner Beyond beautiful places, the National Park Service protects our nation's emancipation sites and stories As we celebrate Juneteenth, it is equally important to recognize the role that the enslaved had in their own emancipation. The National Park Service has the honor of protecting sacred places and histories for the American people, many of which explore enslavement, emancipation, and the fight for equality that are integral to the American experience. Determining Harriet Tubman’s Birth Year Learn how historians determined Harriet Tubman's birth month as March, 1822. Photo Courtesy of Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Harriet Tubman stares stoically into the camera infront of her. National Parks Named in Honor of Women Women’s history is found in more than 400 national parks across the country and still being made today. National parks come in many different shapes, sizes, naming designations, and reasons for being created. Explore national parks that were created and named in honor of specific women and take a closer look at these women’s lasting legacy on American history. Bust of Alice Paul Project Profile: Conserve and Restore Coastal Marsh Systems In Northeast Parks Accounting for Future Sea Level Rise The National Park Service will improve resiliency of coastal marsh ecosystems in Northeast parks through marsh restoration, facilitated marsh migration, and planning for inevitable changes from increases in sea level and storm surge. A view of a salt marsh from an overlook area. The Magic Sash, Episode 5: "Harriet" Lesson Plan This lesson plan accompanies episode 5 of the Magic Sash podcast. This lesson looks at the underground railroad and black suffrage in relation to the women's suffrage movement. Harriet Tubman sitting in a chair Saving Precious Salt Marsh The Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law bolster climate resilience at nine East Coast parks through funding of salt marsh restoration. An aerial view of a green, tan and brown marsh along a coastline.

Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior National Monument Maryland Harriet Tubman circa 1885. Historical map of the Chesapeake region of Maryland and the way north to freedom. Quote from Sarah Bradford’s 1901 biography on Tubman Courtesy of the Ohio Historical Society, Library of Congress A Different Kind of 19th-century Battlefield Popularized with a name that reflected the technological marvel of its day, the Underground Railroad was a resistance movement and secret network that helped enslaved people emancipate themselves to lives of freedom. While people held in bondage sought freedom and self-determination through escape and flight from the earliest days of the nation, this activity intensified in the years prior to the Civil War. The national monument boundary encompasses an approximately 25,000acre mosaic of federal, state, and private lands in Dorchester County, Maryland. It includes large sections of land that are significant to Tubman’s early years and evoke her life while enslaved and as a conductor on the Underground Railroad. The national monument includes the following areas. There are no national park facilities on these sites: Underground Railroad activity represents a different kind of 19th-century battlefield. Like a battlefield, the events that took place on this ground and the people who participated in them are long gone. Like a battlefield, the fight was for freedom and the risks were life and death. And, like the secret network that the national monument commemorates, the history here may not be immediately obvious. Stewart’s Canal, dug by hand by free and enslaved people between 1810 and 1832 for commercial transportation. Tubman learned important outdoor skills working navigating the canal and when she worked in nearby timbering operations with her father, Ben Ross. Stewart’s Canal is part of the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge and, while part of the national monument, will continue to be owned, operated and managed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. You won’t see Harriet Tubman represented here in structures and statues; rather, she is memorialized in the land, water, and sky of the Eastern Shore where she was born and where she returned again and again to free others. Tubman would easily recognize this place. The landscapes and waterways that she navigated and used for sanctuary on her Underground Railroad missions have changed little from her time. Home site of Jacob Jackson, a free African American man who received a coded letter to help Tubman communicate secretly with her family. He was a conduit for a message to alert her three brothers, Henry, Benjamin, and Robert that she would soon come to guide their escape from slavery to the north. The Jacob Jackson Home Site was RIGHT Drawing of Harriet Tubman in her Civil War uniform from Sarah Bradford’s 1869 biography of Tubman. Tubman served and advised the Union during the Civil War. The Granger Collection, New York BACKGROUND Tubman was a master at surreptitiously navigating the wetlands and landscapes of the area where she was born in Dorchester County, Maryland to guide others to freedom on the Underground Railroad. NPS illustration donated to the National Park Service by the Conservation Fund for inclusion in the new national monument. You can continue your exploration on the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Byway, an All-American Road, the highest level of designation for a scenic byway in the US. The byway is a 125-mile driving tour of more than two dozen historic sites and scenic vistas associated with Tubman that lie both within and outside of the national monument. www.harriettubmanbyway.org “The difference between us is very marked. Most that I have done and suffered in the service of our cause has been in public, and I have received much encouragement at every step of the way. You, on the other hand, have labored in a private way.” Frederick Douglass to Harriet Tubman, Rochester, August 29, 1868 “I never met with any person of any color who had more confidence in the voice of God, as spoken direct to her soul.” Abolitionist Thomas Garrett, describing Tubman Newspaper advertisement seeking return of Tubman and her brothers on October 3, 1849. In it, Tubman is referred to by her childhood nickname, “Minty”, short for her given name, Araminta Ross. Used by the courtesy of James & Susan Meredith and the Bucktown Village Foundation. The Granger Collection, New York. On the Edge of Freedom “When I found I had crossed that line [into freedom in Pennsylvania], I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything; the sun came like gold through the trees, and over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven.” Harriet Tubman From wretchedly humble beginnings, Harriet Tubman lived her principles and achieved fame in her lifetime. Her death on March 10, 1913 was reported in the New York Times, followed a year later by