“When I found out I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such glory over everything; the sun shone like gold through the trees and over the fields, and I felt like I was in paradise.” Harriet Tubman was an important African American woman in the history of slavery. Harriet Tubman still holds the interest of modern Americans because of her efforts to help others achieve freedom. Harriet Tubman was born a slave around 1820 on a plantation in Dorchester County, Maryland. His mother, Harriet Green, worked as a cook on the plantation and his father, Benjamin, was a forestry worker. Harriet had eight siblings, but slavery eventually forced many of them apart, even after her mother tried to keep them together. When Harriet was five, she was hired out as a nanny where she cried if the baby started crying, leaving her with permanent emotional scars. Around the age of seven, Harriet was hired out as a farm laborer. “She later said that she preferred the physical labor of the plantations to the inland domestic shores.” At the age of 12, Harriet realized the need for justice when she saw an overseer about to throw a weight at a runaway slave. When she stood in the middle of the two, she was hit on the head. “The weight crushed my skull. They carried me home, all bloody and passed out. I had no bed, no place to lie down, and they put me on the loom seat, and I stayed there all day and the next. She would randomly fall into a deep sleep and have vivid dreams, which she believed were religious experiences. Harriet also had seizures and narcolepsy for the rest of her life. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Around 1844, Harriet married a free black man, John Tubman, and changed her last name to his. The marriage was not good and John would threaten to sell Harriet to the South. Threats from her husband and the idea that her brothers, Ben and Henry, were about to be sold led Harriet to plan an escape. On September 17, 1849, Harriet, Ben, and Henry fled Maryland, but along the way, Ben and Henry returned. With the help of the Underground Railroad, Harriet traveled 90 miles north to Pennsylvania and freedom. With a sense of relief, she recalls: “When I realized I had crossed that line, I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such glory over everything; the sun shone like gold through the trees and over the fields, and I felt like I was in paradise. After working as a safe housekeeper, she disagreed with living alone and wanted freedom for her family and others living in slavery. She quickly returned to the South to save her niece, Kessiah, because she was going to be sold along with her two young children. Kessiah's husband made the winning bid for his wife at an auction, and Harriet helped the entire family escape to Philadelphia. It was the first trip of many. With the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, Harriet's job as conductor of the Underground Railroad was made more difficult. » Which required the return of the escaped slaves. Any black man, even a free one, could be sent south only on the affidavit of anyone claiming to be his owner. The law deprived runaway slaves of basic legal rights such as ».”.