Auburn Part II - Harriet Tubman House

It took two months for Krista and me to schedule our return visit to Auburn, partly because we couldn’t go on a Monday or Tuesday – Elderberry Pond Restaurant isn’t open for lunch those days! We finally found a lovely Wednesday – not too hot, not too humid. Good thing, too, because most of the one-hour Harriet Tubman tour is outside. 

caption: "The end of slavery did not bring social and
 economic equality. Notice that all of the passengers...are
white, while the attendants are African Americans." Plus ça 
change, plus c'est la même chose...

We arrived at the Harriet Tubman property 45 minutes before the noon tour (there are only 3 guided tours each day, and to visit the one historic structure on the property you must take a tour). That gave us plenty of time to read through the displays in the Visitor Center. Even though I had been here 6 years ago with my Florida friend, Nanette, I had lost most of the details, and was delighted to get reacquainted with her non-Underground Railroad feats during the Civil War, acting as scout, nurse, and spy. And I hadn’t recalled that at a young age, her skull had been fractured by an iron weight which mistakenly hit her instead of its target, and she developed seizures and religious “visions” as a result of her traumatic brain injury, later diagnosed as temporal lobe epilepsy (ah, science…).

Our guide, Rufai Shardow, was from Ghana (as was Tubman’s grandmother), and his personal connection to slavery was very emotional. Ghana lost about 12% of its people to slavery, and 60 forts were constructed on the coast to house the slaves before transit. Rufai grew up in one of these “slave castles,” which had become a prison, where his father worked as a guard.

Although the property opened as a historic site in 1953, it just last year became a National Historic Park, to honor Tubman’s legacy (Rufai mentioned something about Tubman going on the $20 bill, but I told him not to hold his breath with this administration…). And because National Park Service staff are on-site in July and August, there is no admission fee (Park Rangers are not allowed to collect fees). Come September, the Harriet Tubman House staff will take over again, and entry will return to $5. In the meantime, donations of the same are encouraged!

Our tour took a leisurely walk the short distance from the Visitor’s Center to the Tubman Home for the Aged, with frequent stops in the shade along the way for our guide to share his knowledge and observations. Tubman took 13 trips to Maryland to shepherd slaves north – mostly her family members, but sometimes also others whom could trust not to betray her. Auburn, with 100 sites on the Underground Railroad, was a true sanctuary city. Rufai called the Underground Railroad “the most dramatic protest in the history of the country,” and reminded us that slavery still exists, although we now call it “human trafficking.” (for an excellent documentary on the subject, watch Robert Bilheimer’s Not My Life, narrated by Glenn Close). 

The Harriet Tubman Residence is currently being restored, and the NPS plans to open it in two to three years and display the findings from the ongoing archeological digs on the property. This brick structure took Tubman’s family three years to build after their original wood frame house burned. 

This time, I bought fresh eggs, too!
And the owner had a beautiful dog...

One of the placards mentions that when Tubman died in 1913, the New York Times listed her among the 250 most important people to have died that year. Very few on that list would be recognizable 100 years later. At the end of the tour, Krista had the privilege of reading a quote from Booker T. Washington to the group: “Her life is an inspiration to all.” Indeed.