At some point during her early teenage years, she was hit in the head with an iron weight. Tubman struggled with the effects of the injury for the rest of her life.
Late in the presentation, there is a haunting choral selection titled "Stole Me from My Mama's Arms." In it, Tubman, played by soprano and Columbia native Kishna Davis, describes to abolitionists how her sister was sold.
"It's beautiful, but she's got grit! For Tubman, you don't want a voice that's flowery and pretty because this is a woman who has gone through some stuff," Okoye says. "It's got that beauty, but this is a woman who's seen some stuff so you need that weighty kind of talent."
The other arrangements include "I Heard About Kind Masters," "Rumor Says We're Next" and "Brown-Skinned Gal." Okoye's lyrics and melodies attempt to separate Tubman's fact from legend and myth.
"I was just enchanted by the story of this woman. ... We think of her Underground Railroad years, but there were years before that [that] people just don't think about. She escaped, she kept coming down, and I wondered why did she keep coming down to [Maryland]," she says. "What she did was so important to who she was and who she represents now.
"It's so important, [that] I didn't want me to get in the way," she says, "so I really studied her and I wanted to give her a voice."
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