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Essay About Harriet Tubman
Essay About Harriet Tubman
Essay About Harriet Tubman
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More handpicked essays just for you.
Essay About Harriet Tubman
Essay About Harriet Tubman
Essay About Harriet Tubman
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
When the Underground Railroad was operational there was an important conductor who was also very well known: her name was, Harriet Tubman. She would proceed each mission with an extreme level of caution every time, making sure no one was caught. Which allowed her to be very successful in these missions. Her cautiousness was shown within the story “Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the Underground Railroad” which was written by Ann Petry. She would show multiple examples of different writing techniques to fully describe Tubman’s character and some examples of the techniques are, the use of imagery, the use of parallelism, along with the use of allusions to indirectly reference something or someone.
Despite the challenges brought upon them, the people of the Underground Railroad had to make many sacrifices in their lives. It is through the actions of characters in the passage “Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the Underground Railroad” that readers learn themes of freedom and sacrifice. One of the most important characters that represents these traits is Harriet Tubman through her perseverance. Thomas Garrett and Ellen Craft also demonstrate these characteristics through their experiences with runaway slaves. Moreover, these characters each demonstrate themes of freedom and sacrifice.
As a little girl Harriet Tubman saw what it was like to be a slave although she had to deal with the harsh rules she had as a kid. Tubman grew up to be like all the other slaves but however Harriet realized that their laws were really unfair and had a big difference then the laws for the white people. Harriet later on grew up to be a older woman while still being forced to work while the laws still haven't changed. Therefore Harriet was fed up and wanted freedom for herself and all other slaves just like her so she decided to use all the skills and knowledge she had being a slave from when she was younger to create tunnels underground that would help many escape to freedom.
In this essay I will examine the Underground Railroad over a period of turbulence that spanned ten years and focus on some of the key figures involved and the significance of their roles. Harriet Tubman and Harriet Breecher Stowe were both central to the movement during this time and although they focused their attention on vastly different areas of the Railroad both women had a profound and positive impact. Harriet Beecher Stowe was a white woman from Cincinnati Ohio. When the Fugitive Slave Act 1850 came into effect it ironically galvanised a new era in the Underground Railroad where Stowe, like many other whites was spurred into action. Not only did Stowe personally aid escaping slaves by welcoming them into her home temporarily
This fear, perhaps more than any other aspect of the institution, revealed the deeply dehumanizing horror of slavery." (p. 10). This line from the past presents empathy and an understanding of why Tubman would risk her life so many times to save hundreds of slaves. It also gives background information on slavery that is vital to the understanding of the horrors of slavery. On the downside, this organizational style allows for numerous amounts of unnecessary details to be included in the biography.
According to the story, “Harriet Tubman: Conductor of the Underground Railroad”, it states “Somehow she would have to instill courage into these eleven people, most of them strangers…”. When the shelter Harriet Tubman promised was rejecting fugitives, instead of feeding the fugitives with cornbread, milk or fried pork she needed to satisfy their hunger with hopes and dreams of freedom to motivate the fugitives to keep on going. Keeping the fugitives motivated wasn’t easy though, they were hungry and tired of walking hundreds of miles barefoot. Some even considered turning back, but Harriet insisted they keep on moving on the route to freedom. It was imperative that the fugitives and Harriet continued to move forward, otherwise if they got caught during the trip Harriet would have been hanged while the fugitives would’ve had to be shipped back to their plantations and sold to other slave owners.
The Fugitive Slave act was put in place and slaves would be returned to their slave masters and depending on what they did, they could get anything from beaten to tortured to killed. Harriet escaped her slave master so it was very risky for her to be in the US. I believe the underground railroad was her greatest achievement because of her time spent, the risk and the number of people she helped. First she spent a lot of time doing the underground railroad.
Children's books were made based off The Underground Railroad, and it is a historical event that is taught to many students. Harriet Tubman went through a lot during her lifetime from the start of her childhood, to hardships during the time she rose to fame, and to the end of her lifetime where her legacy moved all. Harriet Tubman’s parents were
Imagine being a slave at such a young age and having to learn many things so early in life but later help you when you are older well that is what happened to Harriet Tubman, she wouldn’t stop until she would be able to save any slave she saw. The biography, “Harriet Tubman: Conductor of the Underground Railroad” by Ann Petry is about a slave who learned many skills as a child that would teach her to defend herself. She learned these many skills from her father when she was 6 years old. These skills would later come in handy for her when she is older. She would use these skills later to save many slaves from their owners and escape from slavery for good.
“On my Underground Railroad I never ran my train off the track, and I never lost a passenger.” This quote from Harriet Tubman just shows how much she cared about making sure that everyone she helped found their way to freedom. Harriet Tubman is important to history for her time, work, and effort in the underground railroad. Harriet Tubman is important to history and civil rights because she is an example of someone who fought for the freedom of slaves. To begin with, Harriet Tubman helped ensure the final defeat of slavery.
Harriet Tubman was a woman who changed the course of history by fighting against slavery throughout her entire life. Most modern-day individuals know her for conducting the Underground Railroad and helping hundreds of enslaved people escape from their captors. She went on several perilous journeys to southern plantations despite the heavy reward sum that plantation owners eventually placed on her head. Her courage and readiness to risk her own capture allowed many to live better lives in the North. However, conducting the Underground Railroad was not the only way she contributed to the abolition of slavery.
She was a conductor in the Underground Railroad. She helped slaves escape from slavery. The last time she stepped out to do her job was three days ago and she never came back” the boy sobbed. I looked around and it seemed like he stayed alone at home. “The Underground Railroad’’?
As her years of conducting the railroad culminates, Harriet starts her career of concocting superb speeches on top of her head. Not only was the audience moved, but they were also surprised of how inspiring her tone of voice is (207). In addition, as she tells her own synopses of her life, Harriet speaks her story with dramatic interpretation and excellent eloquence in a speech so well that the audience was thrilled upon scheduling another speech with Harriet. In one of her speeches, Harriet ferociously convinces a little boy to holler ‘Fire, fire’, which is a feat that only parents can normally do, let alone a stranger. (126) Also, Harriet persuaded, not always by cajoling, with a deep-tone husky voice and a gun in her hand, a despaired slave to continue on the journey instead of wavering on the decision to either turn back and risk punishment, or to go to freedom.
These conductors guided these fugitive slaves to escape from their enslavement in order to be free as part of the “underground railroad”. Among these conductors is the notable Harriet Tubman, a former slave who led three hundred slaves to safety in the North (McGill, 2005). Besides assisting these fugitives in escapement, other efforts included housing these slaves, recapturing them from authorities, and providing resources for the fugitives to settle in once freed. To further illustrate the metaphor of the underground railroad umbrella, “the homes and businesses where fugitives would rest and eat were called "stations" and "depots" and were run by "stationmasters," those who contributed money or goods were "stockholders," and the "conductor" was responsible for moving fugitives from one station to the next” (“The Underground Railroad”, n.d.). This network of systems continued on and as it became more widespread and more known about, the underground railroad found success in bringing the issue of slavery “to the forefront of public consciousness and convinced a substantial and growing segment of the northern population that the South’s peculiar institution was morally wrong and potentially dangerous to the American way of life” (Devine, 2011).
My American Hero is someone who inspired my love for reading without them even knowing. A caring teacher who had always welcomed me in her library. Mrs. Ondersin is someone who always let me take that extra book or two to read over the weekend, or helped me find the next book in the series. She always was kind to everyone she met and was never afraid to help you with just about anything. Although I have so many good memories of reading in that library or watching some National Geographic film on the big T.V, the best days were where she read to us, sitting down on the old blue carpet, picking out a book and being read to.