- Harriet Tubman (18207-1913) is the best-known “conductor” to have worked on the Underground Railroad, a network of abolitionists who undermined slavery by spiriting Blacks to freedom in the North and Canada. A fugitive herself from Maryland to Philadelphia in 1849, she risked some 19 return trips to rescue about 300 slaves. Rewards for her capture totaled $40,000. Her courage and shrewdness were well known and all the more remarkable considering that she suffered recurrent blackouts throughout her life from a concussion she received at age 13 when an overseer struck her on the head with a 2-lb weight. During the Civil War, Tubman served the Union as a nurse, spy, and commander of small groups of male scouts engaged in raiding parties behind Confederate lines. Congress eventually recognized this work by awarding her a pension. Tubman spent the rest of her life near Auburn, New York, establishing a home for indigent, aged Blacks, promoting schools for freed Blacks in the South, taking a leading role in the Page 247 →growth of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in upstate New York, and working in the suffrage movement.
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