For more than two hundred years, millions of Black people in America were held as slaves. They could be bought and sold. They could be beaten. Their families could be torn apart. And many white churches in the South taught that slavery was allowed by God. That is part of our own Christian history, and it is shameful.
Other Christians, many of them enslaved themselves, read the same Bible and found a God who sets captives free. Harriet Tubman was one of them.
Born into slavery
Harriet was born around 1822 on a farm in Maryland, a state on the east coast. She was named Araminta Ross at birth. As a girl she was sent to work for cruel masters. When she was a teenager, a boss threw a heavy weight at another enslaved man. It hit Harriet in the head instead. For the rest of her life, she had headaches and fell asleep without warning. She also said she had visions, and she believed they came from God.
She prayed constantly. She later said she talked to God all day, the way you talk to a friend.
Escape
In 1849, afraid she was about to be sold far away, Harriet ran. She traveled at night, about ninety miles, following the North Star, helped by people along the way, both Black and white, many of them Christians. She reached Philadelphia, in Pennsylvania, where slavery was not allowed.
She later said that when she crossed the line into freedom, she looked at her hands to see if she was the same person.
She went back
She was free, but she was heartbroken, because her family was still enslaved. Over the next ten years, she went back into Maryland about thirteen times, at great risk, and led about seventy people to freedom, including her parents and brothers. People called her "Moses."
During the Civil War she worked for the Union army as a nurse, scout and spy. In 1863 she helped lead a raid along the Combahee River in South Carolina. More than seven hundred enslaved people went free in a single night.
After the war she lived in Auburn, New York, where she cared for poor and elderly Black people in her home and later opened a home for the aged. She died in 1913.
Why she did it
Harriet believed God wanted the enslaved set free. Jesus read words about that in his very first sermon.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,
Luke 4:18 · King James VersionThe original Greek
Πνεῦμα κυρίου ἐπʼ ἐμέ, οὗ εἵνεκεν ἔχρισέν με εὐαγγελίσασθαι πτωχοῖς, ἀπέσταλκέν με κηρύξαι αἰχμαλώτοις ἄφεσιν καὶ τυφλοῖς ἀνάβλεψιν, ἀποστεῖλαι τεθραυσμένους ἐν ἀφέσει,
Found in Papyrus 75 (about AD 200), Codex Vaticanus (about AD 325), Codex Sinaiticus (about AD 350).
The words "to heal the brokenhearted" appear in later copies, not in the oldest ones.
What it means for us
We have to tell this story honestly. Some Christians used the Bible to defend slavery, and many churches stayed silent. Harriet's faith grew in spite of that, not because of it.
What she shows us is a faith that would not stay comfortable while others were in chains. If you know people who are trapped, by poverty, abuse, addiction or injustice, you do not have to lead them through a forest at night. But you can refuse to look away, and you can help one person toward freedom.