♪ ♪ ♪ (theme music playing) ♪ RUBENSTEIN: I'll be in conversation today with Tiya Miles, who is a professor of history at Harvard University.

We're gonna talk about her book, “Night Flyer, Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People.” We're coming to you from the Robert H. Smith Auditorium of the New York Historical.

Thank you very much for being here today.

So, Harriet Tubman, uh, was a difficult person to write about, I assume, because she didn't leave any letters.

She was not allowed to learn how to read and write when she was younger, and she never later learned how to read and write.

So, where did you get the materials and what, what kind of materials were available to you?

MILES: Well, I actually have a leaning toward the literary.

I, I love texts.

I love texts from, uh, Harriet Tubman's time period, and so it was a challenge looking at a person who did not produce her own writing.

But when it comes to the study of slavery, we do have to look for sources that might be a bit unconventional in terms of what is documented and who wrote what.

In the case of Harriet Tubman, even though she herself wasn't able to learn how read, uh, or to write, she did talk to a number of people about her life.

She left us what literary historian Jean Humez has called an expressive legacy because of all the different talks that she gave to various groups trying to raise money for the Underground Railroad.

So, we have actually a number of written materials not written by her, but they are as told to texts about her life.

We have sections of letters that she dictated to others.

We have, uh, descriptions of her performances written down by others.

And we have a record of the prayers that she thought in her mind, we have a record of the songs that she sang.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

Let's talk about, um, her life.

So, uh, Harriet Tubman was not born as Harriet Tubman.

What was her name when she was born?

MILES: She was named Araminta Ross, and she went by the nickname "Minty."

RUBENSTEIN: And she was born in where?

MILES: She was born in Dorchester County, Maryland.

On the... RUBENSTEIN: Which is the eastern shore of Maryland.

MILES: Eastern shore of Chesapeake Bay.

RUBENSTEIN: And her parents were both slaves, presumably, right?

MILES: Her parents were both enslaved, yes, by different people.

RUBENSTEIN: And, uh, when she was growing up, did her mother spend much time raising her, or was she kind of not able to do that for a lot of reasons related to slavery?

MILES: Tubman is quoted as saying that, uh, she grew up like a neglected weed.

But this had to do with the circumstances of her enslavement.

Her parents loved each other, and that much is clear from what we have in, uh, the evidentiary record.

They also loved their nine children deeply.

They did their best to teach their children when they were with them, but unfortunately, the owner of Harriet Tubman's mother, who was also Tubman's, uh, owner, leased the children out repeatedly from very young ages.

So, when Tubman was around six-ish, she was already being leased out to, uh, neighboring slave-holding farmers.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

So, when she was around 12 or 13, a traumatic event occurred, which changed her life forever, you might argue.

And can you describe how she was injured and what type of injury she got that she lived with for the rest of her life?

MILES: Araminta grew up being miles away from her family, living in different locations and experiencing successive movements that were, were forced upon her.

During this time, she was often put to work outside.

She had to do grueling, heavy outdoor work from the time that she was a very young child, including removing dead muskrats from metal traps in cold brackish waters.

This was very hard work, but she was good at it.

And by the time she was a pre-adolescent being leased out again and again, she was doing agricultural labor in the fields.

On one of these occasions, she was told to go with the, the plantation cook to the local general store to pick up some supplies.

And while there, Harriet Tubman noticed that, uh, a, a young enslaved boy or a, a, a teenager who had been enslaved was running from an overseer.

So, when the overseer picked up, uh, a metal weight that was used for measuring out its goods, and when he threw it at that, uh, young enslaved boy or teenager, it was Tubman who was struck because she had put herself in between them.

She was knocked to the ground.

She was knocked unconscious.

She, um, was bleeding profusely.

She was in great pain.

And yet the next day, she was right back out in the fields, bleeding as she was doing that, um, heavy outdoor labor.

So, this moment led to Tubman having an injury that she suffered with for the entirety of her life.

She had terrible headaches after this.

She had, um, intense visions after this.

She experienced some kind of a brain injury, which scholars today now think led to a form of temporal lobe epilepsy.

RUBENSTEIN: And from time to time, she would have seizures, or she would just fall asleep in the middle of whatever activity she was doing and then maybe wake up later.

Um, her mother nursed her back to health, but she never recovered from that injury completely.

Is that right?

MILES: That's right.

I mean she, she had chronic pain, and she had regular disruptions to her normal routine.

It could be as frequent as 15 minutes.

So, I'm not sure how long we've been talking so far, and that if Tubman were with us right now, she would've already had a seizure and already been unconscious.

RUBENSTEIN: Alright, so she's recovering from that injury.

She's still enslaved.

At what time does she begin to think that maybe she would like to be free and escape?

MILES: This is a moment where we would need to sort of get into Tubman's head, which is impossible to do.

But I think that we have a window if we look at her prayer, her prayer life, actually.

And what we know is that from the time when she was little "Minty" being leased out to people, she prayed in a way that suggested that she knew that the forced labor that she was compelled to do, the forced separation from her family, the suffering of her parents, was wrong.

So, her sense of mission developed over a lifetime, but her awareness that this is not right, that this is immoral, that God would be against this seems to have taken shape when she was a very young child.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

So, at some point, she decides that she would like to be free and to escape, and she tries to persuade two of her brothers, uh, to, to, uh, escape with her.

And that mission begins, and then what happens?

MILES: Well, Tubman seems to have heard that there were rumors that she or her relatives might be sold.

RUBENSTEIN: Her sisters had been sold.

MILES: Two of her sisters had already been sold.

So, she had witnessed, uh, the very traumatic separation of family members.

When she heard this, she talked with her brothers about trying to make an escape before this might happen to them, and they did make the efforts in the fall of 1849.

They set out, they were gone for, uh, several days, and it turns out that her two brothers decided that they wanted to return.

It's not 100% clear why, but they did have family ties.

One of them was already a husband.

Um, maybe they were afraid of, of what laid before them.

Maybe they were concerned about being, uh, caught and punished, but they all turned around at that point and went back.

RUBENSTEIN: So later, she decides to go on her own.

At what age is she when she decides to go on her own to escape?

MILES: She's in her thirties.

It's only a matter of weeks, or, you know, perhaps a month.

It's still that fall of 1849, and there are recollections that are written down about her singing a song about leaving as she walks by plantations where her relatives are working so that they would know that she was saying goodbye, and then she's heads off on her own.

RUBENSTEIN: Um, at that time, is she married?

MILES: Yes.

RUBENSTEIN: And she's married to whom?

MILES: She married a free Black man named John Tubman when she was around 22 years old, and John Tubman is someone who seems to have thought that Harriet Tubman should live the life that they had to a certain extent, accept their circumstances and, and do the best they, they could.

And yet, she could not accept those circumstances.

And so, she, she did run and, and she left her husband behind.

RUBENSTEIN: And she took his last name, and then she changed her first name to honor her mother.

MILES: This seems to be the case.

And, and she did this actually, um, before she escaped.

RUBENSTEIN: Uh, how does she get to where she needs to go, the Northern States?

Does she have a carriage?

Does she have any horses?

MILES: Well, this is one of the most incredible aspects of, uh, Harriet Tubman's life story.

She walked.

I mean, later when she became an activist on the Underground Railroad, and when she had access to, to various other means of conveyance, she used all, a manner of ways to move around.

But at this juncture, when she first escaped, she was walking on foot by herself, through the forest, and as we remember, falling into unconsciousness every 15 minutes, half an hour, every hour.

RUBENSTEIN: So, uh, how long does it take her before she actually gets to the designation she wanted to go to, which I think initially was Philadelphia?

MILES: Yes.

It takes her about 10 days to two weeks.

We don't know precisely how long, in part because she kept this information secret, as did other people who worked in the abolitionist network.

But even though she was alone, she did have access to information.

So, there were other enslaved Black people who had escaped, uh, on foot heading to Philadelphia, and she also had a father.

This, this was, uh, Ben Ross, who knew the forest.

So, we can understand that he taught Harriet Tubman something about how to navigate through the woods.

So she wasn't, uh, fully without resources.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

Does she know anybody in Philadelphia?

What does she do when she gets to Philadelphia?

MILES: She gets a job.

She gets a job.

So, this is another remarkable thing about Tubman.

When she escaped, she may have and probably did meet other Black people in the city who helped her, who gave her advice, but it took probably a year for her to find a circle of like-minded people who were actively trying to help others to escape.

RUBENSTEIN: What propels her to want to go back and bring out other people, risking her life every time she goes back?

MILES: Mm-hmm.

The answer to this question returns us to her early life.

Minty Ross was a deeply spiritual person, even as a child.

She was also very close to her family.

She would sneak away when she was being leased out to go back and visit her mother.

She loved her family.

She had a deep faith.

And so when she first escaped, she was torn about leaving beloved family members.

And she tells a story about how the moment she touched free soil, she fell to her knees, and she prayed.

She was thanking the God of her belief for her freedom, but she was also lamenting the fact that others she loved were not free.

This was, this was a torture for her.

And so, she decided, knees and hands on free soil in the context of prayer, that she was going to go back and save them if only God would help her.

RUBENSTEIN: So she goes back the first time to take, or was it her parents or her brothers that she wants to bring out?

MILES: Her parents, she would bring out much later.

She went back to try to help a niece, because there were information networks that were spanning across the upper south into the north.

And people shared tidbits that they heard.

Tubman was very close with some, uh, Black mariners, and she heard that one of her nieces might be sold.

So she went back to help, uh, rescue that niece.

RUBENSTEIN: And she rescued the niece?

MILES: She did.

RUBENSTEIN: And the total number of trips she went back and forth was that about 13 or so?

MILES: Approximately, yes.

RUBENSTEIN: And the total number of people she brought into freedom was that roughly 70 or so?

MILES: So the number is around 70 for people that she personally went and helped to navigate from, uh, the slave states, the free states, and into Canada.

But the knowledge she had, the information she shared, affected hundreds more.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

So, um, when she goes back, is there a bounty put on her because she gets to be well known for being what's called then a "Conductor" on the Underground Railroad?

MILES: Oh, yes, yes.

There was a bounty placed on her head.

We don't know the precise number, but to capture Harriet Tubman would have been quite a prize for anyone who was interested in, uh, maintaining the slave system.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, when she goes back and forth, does she go from Philadelphia or wherever she's leaving from, uh, by herself, or does she take other people with her to help protect her?

MILES: The simple answer is she went by herself.

She organized her own missions, and she carried out her own missions.

And she is, uh, only one of two women in US history who we know who did that.

But she insisted that she was not alone.

When people asked her, how did you it?

You know, weren't, weren't you afraid?

Her response was that she wasn't afraid and she wasn't at risk because Jesus was with her.

RUBENSTEIN: So, does she carried a gun with her when she's going back and forth?

MILES: Maybe I should have said Jesus and a gun.

She did.

She did.

RUBENSTEIN: She had a gun.

MILES: She was armed.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

So, to finance all these trips to get food or provisions or things like that, just to pay for the subsistence cost of going back and forth, where did she get the money for that?

MILES: The first way she got the money was by working for it.

When she was getting settled in Philadelphia, she took time out, especially in the warmer months, to work in hotels.

She went to Delaware to work in hotels, she went to New Jersey and, and she did domestic work.

After about a year or two, though, when she was plugged into the larger network, she was getting donations from people, not just in the States, but also abroad.

RUBENSTEIN: So, after she does her 13th trip, um, around that time, the Civil War is breaking out.

So, what does she do during the Civil War?

Does she decide to stop this type of, uh, Underground Railroad activity?

But if she does, what does she do, try to do to help the Civil War effort for the North?

MILES: Her work for the Union Army and her work on behalf of still enslaved Black people, uh, Black refugees during the Civil War, was connected to her Underground Railroad work.

She was doing this freedom-fighting mission over the course of her entire life.

So, Harry Tubman left where she was living in Auburn, New York, and went down to South Carolina.

And so, when she was in South Carolina, she did a range of things.

She was a scout.

She was a spy.

She did recruit, uh, enslaved Black men from the area who knew the terrain to help with this work.

She worked as a nurse, and she did apply botanical knowledge.

RUBENSTEIN: At one time, she helps lead the union's forces to free 700 slaves.

Um, that's her most famous, I guess, trip back to there.

Can you describe what happened and how she managed to help free 700 slaves in one effort?

MILES: So, there's a fabulous book that just won the Pulitzer Prize that I'm sure many of you are aware of by Edda Fields-Black.

It's called "Combee."

And this book details the Combahee River Raid of 1863 and Harriet Tubman's work in that raid.

Tubman, as Fields-Black explains it, was uniquely positioned to serve as a go-between, so she could talk to the union officers, she could talk to enslaved Black men and women, to refugees who were in Beaufort, South Carolina, and she could bring together the things that all these different people knew.

So, in that role of being a go-between and a leader of several Black men who were scouts, Tubman helps to lead a waterborne mission on the Combahee River to the rice-growing plantations along that river.

And so, she, along with many officers and soldiers, did free over 700 people by moving gunboats down the Combahee River and encouraging the slave people to flee those rice plantations and to get onto the boats, which deprived all of those Confederate planters of their labor force and also an important source of income.

RUBENSTEIN: So, for all these efforts she's doing on behalf of the Union Army, is she being compensated?

Is she on a salary or something like that?

MILES: So, she was not being compensated to the degree that she was contributing to the effort.

And she also made a really important decision, which was she decided not to accept any kind of pay at that time from the military because she didn't want to be, um, differentiated from other Black people.

She wanted to form close ties with them, and she felt that if it looked like she was getting some kind of special favor... RUBENSTEIN: Mm-hmm.

MILES: ...that she wouldn't be able to forge meaningful relationships.

RUBENSTEIN: But after the war is over, um, some people say, "Well, maybe you should be compensated for all the things you've done," and does Congress decide, yes, she should be compensated, and they adequately compensate her for that?

MILES: It took a very long time.

She did petition multiple times to be compensated, uh, for her work.

And eventually she was, but not to the full extent of everything that she contributed.

RUBENSTEIN: Let's go back for a moment to her personal life.

Um, she was married to John Tubman.

At one time, when she's on one of her Underground Railroad, uh, trips, she goes to meet John Tubman again and say, "Well, I'm free now and you're free, and why don't we move up north together?"

What happens?

MILES: So this was one of her first trips back, which I find very compelling.

So, she went back, she even brought a new suit for him with her.

RUBENSTEIN: And what did he tell her?

MILES: Well it, it's first what she saw when she came back.

Yes.

Yes.

Um, he had remarried.

He was with a new woman, and she was a free woman.

And here, we're, we're purely in the realm of speculation because Tubman does not talk about this.

Um, so far as I know, it wasn't written down.

But, um I, I think we can imagine some of what that may have felt like.

I mean, Tubman has once again risked recapture, risked re-enslavement to come and, and reunite with her husband to bring him back with her, and there's another woman in that house.

RUBENSTEIN: So let's talk about her parents.

Uh, she managed to go back and get both of her parents, and where did she move them to?

MILES: She moved her parents to St.

Catharines, Ontario in Canada.

She apparently got a hold of some kind of rickety wagon contraption, which she brought with her for her parents, because she knew that they were, um, quite old at that time and wouldn't be able to, uh, to walk as easily as she could.

RUBENSTEIN: Uh, under the Fugitive Slave Act that was passed in, uh, 1850 or so, um, it was possible that had you escaped to the North, um, people in the North might be able to get a financial incentive to capture you and take you back to your slave owner.

So did she take them to Canada because she knew that once they're in Canada, there was no chance of a Fugitive Slave Act because there was no slavery in Canada?

MILES: So, the Fugitive Slave Act changed everything for them, not just Tubman, but, but anyone who had been enslaved and who was, was living as a free person in the, the US North, but hadn't been legally freed.

And also, any activists working with this movement they knew that the environment was no longer safe.

And so, they began making efforts, Tubman included, to take people all the way to Canada.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, we talk about her as being a freed person, but she was never freed before the, the, uh, 13th Amendment, was she?

Because, um, although she had escaped and gone to the north, she was not legally free.

Is that right?

MILES: She freed herself, but that's correct.

She was not legally freed by the people who, who, uh, claimed to own her.

RUBENSTEIN: Okay.

So, let's talk about, uh, after the Civil War.

Uh, where did she decide to live?

MILES: So she was already living in Auburn, New York.

She had moved there in the 1850s, and she moved there in part because it was a welcoming environment where there were people who were abolitionists and also feminists working on, uh, on suffrage for women.

She was able to find allies and friends, and supporters there.

And she built a, a community there of sorts with the help of others, particularly Frances Seward.

RUBENSTEIN: Well, when the, uh, suffragette movement is moving forward, does she get involved in that?

MILES: She does.

So even before Tubman started going to suffrage meetings in New York, she was getting assistance from women in the community who were committed not only to Black abolition, but also to women's rights.

So, she was a part of this movement before she officially started attending suffrage meetings.

And, and when she did attend them in New York, she was by, by that time, um, very active and imaginative, but she was also well on in years.

And so her major contribution was to be there, and to, to lend her support to a cause.

RUBENSTEIN: So, uh, we don't know the exact date of her birth, but let's say 1820 or 1821 or '22.

How long did she live?

MILES: She died in 1913.

RUBENSTEIN: So she made it to roughly 90 years old?

MILES: Yes, yes.

RUBENSTEIN: Now, biographers often write about people they admire when they start the work.

Did you come away more impressed with, uh, Harriet Tubman after you did all this research and writing, or basically came away with the same view you had before?

MILES: Oh, no.

Absolutely more impressed with Harriet Tubman.

And when I entered this project, I did it because I for a long time had an intense interest in how the environment intersected with the Underground Railroad.

Tubman as a person, um, was sort of a, a stock figure in my mind.

I, I hate to say that, but I, I'm just being, you know, fully honest here.

She was somebody who I thought I knew.

Um, I had, had a sense of her.

She did tremendous things.

But when I went back to the primary sources that tell us about Tubman's life, I saw a woman who was much deeper, much more thoughtful than I had ever realized before.

I came to see her as a brilliant strategist and a deeply moral person, the likes of which we rarely see.

(audience applause) RUBENSTEIN: Thank you very much for an interesting conversation.

I assume the “Night Flyer” is the reference to the fact that she did all this at night, typically, right?

MILES: That, and also that for a long time before her escape, she had recurring dreams of a white bird that flew from the slave states to freedom.

RUBENSTEIN: Thank you very much.

We've been in conversation, uh, today with Tiya Miles.

Thank you very much.

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