Harriet Tubman Museum

I'm in Georgia Chester County and the person you're looking at is an image of Harriet Tubman and the reason why we're here is we're here at the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad visitors center one of the newest stops on the Underground Railroad trail and joining us to talk a little bit about what's going on here is none other than Angela Crenshaw who is the Ranger here and she knows a little bit of everything about this and it was listen first of all this was a big undertaking you brought a lot of things together one so let's start off at the beginning Oh what was Harriet Tubman's like earliest mentally her earliest memory was lying in the cradle that her father made we talked about that over there and then we have two local artists who actually recreated the cradle so we have young Harriet Tubman holding one of her younger brothers either Moses or Henry with the cradle now one of the things people will see while they're here is a number of the exhibits exemplifying certain portions of a life like the one behind us is what it was like to be a child during slavery want to want to explain a little bit about that I grew up like a neglected weed ignorant of liberty and having no experience of it and I was not happy or contented and it shows young children working in the fields with equipment some of them are wearing shoes some of them are not usually young enslaved children did not receive shoes and it shows the very important industries of fishing and oystering timbering and farming which are still important in Dorchester County today obviously the institution of slavery was not a pleasant time she actually saw her three sisters get soul talk a little bit about that if you will that's correct her three sisters lioness Soph and Mariah Reddy were sold to a chain gang sold south never to be seen again and her sisters also left very young children and that scarred Tubman as well as her mother Tubman can remember the cries of her sister as she's being pulled away on the chain gang leaving her two very young children it also these exhibits talk to what life was like here in this area if you will when we started off we showed you a picture and an image of Harriet Tubman and she's standing on a wood wharf people will go what's that all about sure that image that you saw is actually Tubman in the timber fields she spent a lot of time in the timber fields with her father who was a very respected and skilled timber Foreman and her brothers and this shows them in Stewart's canal so when the trees were cut they were then floated down Stewart's canal to the shipbuilding towns of Church Creek Madison or Wolford and it's within these timber feels that Tubman learned the skills necessary to make her a successful conductor on the Underground Railroad skills such as outdoor survival reading the landscape and foraging for food as well as being comfortable in the woods she went to the Bucktown village store which was similar to a grocery store at that time and she went with the plantation cook and they were going to purchase a few items while they were there there's a runaway slave and a slave catcher and the runaway slave catcher said to Tubman hey grab that slave and she refused to do so so the slave catcher picked up a weight a two-pound weight and threw it meaning to hit the runaway but instead he hit Harriet Tubman's square above her eye and it knocked her out in the final section of our exhibit hall we talk about her first emancipation which was herself emancipation in 18-49 she thought that she would be slit sold and as I mentioned before she lost three sisters very early on to the chain gang so she emancipated herself and then she came back 12 more times for other family members and friends whom she couldn't live without we list those names in the back there and we also highlight the importance of the Underground Railroad and the fact that it was a network of like-minded individuals that wanted to help emancipate other enslaved people well what's the thing that people should take away when they come here I'd like people to know that Harriet Tubman was an amazing woman but she was just that she was a normal woman born into bondage she was illiterate and she had amazing obstacles in her way but she never let those get in the way she overcame all those obstacles to do amazing and great things as well thank you so very much for letting us take a peek inside of both the visitors center and the various things that you have here we hope that you will take an opportunity to come here they tell me it's a little bit easier to get it there are no tickets here is that right so you can come here literally at any time and and get a chance to see everything but for right now let's go back to the studio

Channel: MPT News

Views: 36,936

Keywords: harriet, tubman, museum

Id: 5Fu2fGU4aY4

Length: 4min 26sec (266 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 14 2017