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.

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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

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.

An official proposal to add Harriet Ross Tubman to the Calendar of Saints of the Episcopal Church will be celebrated Sunday with a public worship service in Dorchester County, where the slave and humanitarian was born in 1820.As a "conductor on the Underground Railroad," she was known as "the Moses of her people," leading more than 300 slaves to freedom before the Civil War.During the war, she was a Union scout, spy and nurse. Later, she settled in Auburn, N.Y., where she died in 1913.At last summer's General Convention of the Episcopal Church, Harriet Tubman was nominated formally for commemoration as a saint July 20, with three other women of historical prominence -- Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Amelia Bloomer and Sojourner Truth.

Harriet Tubman By Beverly Lowry Random House / 432 pages / $32 In 1822, Harriet Tubman, nee Araminta Ross, was born into slavery on a Maryland plantation. She came into the world not simply as her parents' issue but as someone else's property. Along with her siblings, she and her parents were chattel, nothing more. Regularly, the Ross family was splintered by the harsh commerce of slavery. The child known as Minty was routinely beaten by despotic owners - punishment for transgressions that were often minor and more often imaginary.

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.

John Hanson's spot in the U.S. Capitol is secure, but Harriet Tubman's chances of securing one are spotty. The General Assembly has been weighing whether to swap in Tubman, who helped slaves travel to freedom on the Underground Railroad, for Hanson, a Southern Maryland merchant and former president of the Continental Congress, in the National Statuary Hall Collection. Each state is allowed only two statues in the collection. Maryland has been represented since 1903 by Hanson and Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the only Roman Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence.

The writer who wishes to smear another writer and proponent of the Tubman statue with the noxious taint of "political correctness" couldn't be more wrong ("Tubman statue: political correctness run amok," March 15). He believes John Hanson will be unfairly relegated because he was a white male and Tubman unreasonably elevated because she was not. My academic experience, albeit a long time ago, was decidedly to the contrary. Although I excelled in history and got a academic prize for it along with a degree cum laude from Western Maryland College, I was somehow unaware of who Harriet Tubman was. The full importance of her accomplishments was not brought home to me until I read a chapter of "Black Profiles In Courage" by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in a Cumberland bookstore in the 1990s.

We mean no disrespect to John Hanson, a Colonial-era planter from Charles County whom most Marylanders haven't heard of, much less most Americans. He was a dedicated champion of American liberty from Great Britain and served in a variety of political posts during the Revolution and its aftermath, culminating in a one-year term as the first president of the Continental Congress under the Articles of Confederation. But the idea of replacing him as one of Maryland's two representatives in the U.S. Capitol's Hall of Statuary with Harriet Tubman is a good one. Hanson shares Maryland's allotment of two statues with Charles Carroll, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and arguably the most important figure in the state during the era. No one is considering him for removal from the hall.

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.

A battle of historic proportions is shaping up in the Maryland General Assembly. On one side: admirers of Harriet Tubman, the Eastern Shore woman who famously helped slaves travel to freedom on the Underground Railroad. On the other: fans of John Hanson, a son of Southern Maryland and president of the Continental Congress, a precursor to the government of the United States. Maryland, one of the original 13 colonies and rich in history, typically embraces all of its notable figures.

Leona K. Frederick, a retired New York State Department of Labor interviewer who was a descendant of Harriet Tubman, died Jan. 5 of pulmonary hypertension at Gilchrist Hospice Care. She was 89. Leona Keene was born and raised at 830 N. Bond St. She was a 1938 graduate of Frederick Douglass High School. She later moved to Philadelphia and then Brooklyn, N.Y., where she earned a bachelor's degree from the City University of New York. Mrs. Frederick worked for the City of New York and later was a hospital dietitian before taking a job in 1977 as an employment security clerk for the New York State Department of Labor.