2013 is the 100th year anniversary of the Eastern Shore’s greatest heroine, Harriet Tubman.
And what an unlikely hero she was!
With five strikes against her, it’s beyond imagining that she would be remembered and celebrated by us today. She was illiterate, black, disabled, enslaved and female, in the 1800s, and in the marshes outside of Cambridge. Think about that for a moment. And wonder, as you might, how she developed a sensibility that she had the power to do anything about it.
But she did. A field hand, she endured cruel and brutal treatment, and escaped from the Eastern Shore, leaving her husband and family behind. She came back over a dozen times. Tubman used her invisibility as an enslaved, tiny woman as a cloak of protection, and managed to bring some 70 people to safety, at great personal risk. She was an underground railroad leader, became a Union scout, spy and nurse in the Civil War, fought for women’s right to vote and opened a nursing home in her later years.
Her present-day relatives will honor her with a wreath-laying ceremony on Saturday Feb. 2nd, at the Tubman Memorial Garden in Cambridge. The event is free and open to the public, but space is limited, so RSVPs are required. To RSVP, email [email protected] or call 800.522.TOUR (8687) or 410.228.1000. Click here for more information.
Major celebration events will be held during the week of March 8 – 10. Visit the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Byway website for more information about those and other Harriet Tubman events in 2013. You can sign up there for updates, and follow the celebration on social media.
Throughout the year, you’re welcome to take a self-guided driving tour including over 30 sites in Dorchester and Caroline Counties related to Tubman’s life and the Underground Railroad. More than 20 new interpretive signs, a new audio guide, and a map and guide are in the works.
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