Harriet Tubman

Harriet Tubman 1820-1913 For her freedom was like heaven Harriet Tubman, born a slave on a plantation in Dorchester County, was 29 years old when she seized the opportunity to escape to freedom in the north. The year was 1849 and as she stood on a hill in Pennsylvania, a free woman for the first time in her life, her thoughts raced. "I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person," recalled the woman who came to be called the "Moses" of her people. "There was such a glory over everything.

Harriet Tubman certainly deserves recognition, but why are we funding with federal dollars a $21 million monument and visitor center in her honor at a time when we are closing national parks, shutting down FAA control towers and dealing with sequester issues ("A monument to Md. abolitionist," March 26)? Our elected officials seem to have lost contact with reality in pursuing their political ambitions. Gov. Martin O'Malley went off campaigning in South Carolina claiming he cut state spending "big time," all the while supporting the Tubman monument.

In addition to such things as new recording contracts and a nationally recognized education program, Marin Alsop's influence as music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra can be seen in the programming each season. She typically weaves connective threads through concert repertoire. For 2011-2012, that thread involves commemorating extraordinary women, including Joan of Arc in November. This weekend, Harriet Tubman is the focus, via the premiere of a work by James Lee III, a Morgan State University professor whose finely crafted music has been gaining increased exposure nationally.

President Barack Obama's designation Monday of a new national monument to Harriet Tubman, who escaped slavery on a Dorchester County plantation in 1849, then helped guide scores of other slaves to freedom in the North during the decade before the Civil War, honors a small and unprepossessing African-American woman who played an outsized role in American history. Mr. Obama's proclamation sets aside the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Monument near the city of Cambridge on Maryland's Eastern Shore as a historical preservation site to be administered by the National Park Service.

Harriet Tubman was one tough lady. She escaped slavery, fleeing an Eastern Shore plantation. She was a leader in the Underground Railroad, traveling at night under the North Star — probably along the Choptank River — hiding at safe houses along the path to freedom. During the Civil War, she saw duty as a spy, assisting Union forces that raided plantations and freed slaves along the Combahee River in South Carolina. Tubman played an outsized role in American history, a contribution that is recently (and belatedly)

After Ernestine Martin Wyatt helped stage a walkout decades ago over a lack of African-American history lessons at her high school, a teacher pulled her aside to ask about Wyatt's family ties to Harriet Tubman. The Maryland-born slave and famed conductor of the Underground Railroad left a personal legacy in her family, Wyatt, a distant niece of the abolitionist, said Saturday: a succession of strong women. And it's that more personal side of Tubman that Wyatt hopes America comes to know during the forthcoming centennial of her death.

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is all about brand-new this month. Two weeks after premiering David T. Little's Baltimore-inspired "Charm," the BSO is set to premiere another commissioned work - "Chuphshah! Harriet's Drive to Canaan," by James Lee III. Lee's composition - in Biblical Hebrew, "chuphshah" means "freedom" - connects to a theme running through the BSO's season: music to celebrate women who persevered against oppression. "Harriet Tubman's ties to Maryland and heroic efforts to shepherd hundreds out of slavery … inspired me to commission a new work to honor and celebrate her legacy," BSO music director Marin Alsop said.

Single-actor shows are extraordinarily difficult to bring off for obvious reasons. But "Sweet Chariot," the account of the life of Harriet Tubman, succeeds where many fail.It does so for several reasons. First, there is the riveting subject matter; the story of the escaped slave from Maryland's Eastern Shore whose work as a "conductor" on the storied Underground Railroad became symbolic of America's war of conscience against the scourge of slavery is a pretty dramatic premise even before a single line is spoken.

CAMBRIDGE -- Dorchester County-born slave Harriet Ross Tubman was honored as a saint here yesterday in the Episcopal church where her owner had been a baptized member.The service of song and word in the 303-year-old Great Choptank Parish would probably have amazed the 19th-century freedom fighter in her own time.But it was extraordinary enough even in present-day Cambridge. Whites and blacks packed Christ Episcopal Church, as the parish is also known, to "re-examine the mistakes of our past," in the words of the Rev. Linda Wheatley, one of the participants.

Few Maryland figures so enshrined in history have remained so enshrouded by myth as the woman called Moses: Harriet Tubman. Frequent distortions have exaggerated the number of slaves she freed and the size of the bounty on her head, among other details. Countless retellings of her escape from slavery and forays back to Dorchester County to liberate her family display unabashed hero worship. Indeed, while at least 40 books written in a half-century rehashed her exploits for the juvenile market, there was a dearth of scholarship on her life.

President Barack Obama set aside 480 acres on the Eastern Shore on Monday as a national monument to honor Harriet Tubman - a victory for advocates who have long sought to memorialize the abolitionist's role in leading dozens of slaves to freedom. Relying on a century-old federal law, Obama expanded a smaller park the state recently broke ground on in Dorchester County, where Tubman was born into slavery in 1822. The new designation places the rural land in the National Park Service's control, protecting it from development.

After Ernestine Martin Wyatt helped stage a walkout decades ago over a lack of African-American history lessons at her high school, a teacher pulled her aside to ask about Wyatt's family ties to Harriet Tubman. The Maryland-born slave and famed conductor of the Underground Railroad left a personal legacy in her family, Wyatt, a distant niece of the abolitionist, said Saturday: a succession of strong women. And it's that more personal side of Tubman that Wyatt hopes America comes to know during the forthcoming centennial of her death.

In 1926, Carter G. Woodson, through his organization, the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (later renamed the Association for the Study of African American Life and History), founded and promoted Negro History Week. He selected February because Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass' birthdays fell during this month. His desire was for Americans to recognize and celebrate the achievements and accomplishments of black people. The response was overwhelming, as black schools, black churches and black and white community leaders around the country rallied behind this call and pushed Negro History Week to the forefront.

In addition to such things as new recording contracts and a nationally recognized education program, Marin Alsop's influence as music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra can be seen in the programming each season. She typically weaves connective threads through concert repertoire. For 2011-2012, that thread involves commemorating extraordinary women, including Joan of Arc in November. This weekend, Harriet Tubman is the focus, via the premiere of a work by James Lee III, a Morgan State University professor whose finely crafted music has been gaining increased exposure nationally.

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is all about brand-new this month. Two weeks after premiering David T. Little's Baltimore-inspired "Charm," the BSO is set to premiere another commissioned work - "Chuphshah! Harriet's Drive to Canaan," by James Lee III. Lee's composition - in Biblical Hebrew, "chuphshah" means "freedom" - connects to a theme running through the BSO's season: music to celebrate women who persevered against oppression. "Harriet Tubman's ties to Maryland and heroic efforts to shepherd hundreds out of slavery … inspired me to commission a new work to honor and celebrate her legacy," BSO music director Marin Alsop said.

Harriet Tubman was one tough lady. She escaped slavery, fleeing an Eastern Shore plantation. She was a leader in the Underground Railroad, traveling at night under the North Star — probably along the Choptank River — hiding at safe houses along the path to freedom. During the Civil War, she saw duty as a spy, assisting Union forces that raided plantations and freed slaves along the Combahee River in South Carolina. Tubman played an outsized role in American history, a contribution that is recently (and belatedly)

Few historical figures are deserving of greater public recognition and tribute than Maryland's own Harriet Tubman. Although typically mentioned in history books as a conductor of the Underground Railroad, the many accomplishments over her long life — and her connection to her native state — are not widely known or adequately appreciated. That's why Congress should move forward with a proposal to create a national park in her name on the Eastern Shore. It is a rare opportunity to right a historical wrong — to set aside the land where Ms. Tubman was born and raised and toiled as a slave so that future generations might walk in her footsteps and develop a deeper understanding of this remarkable woman.