She Led the Way to Freedom

One of our country’s most famous leaders in the fight against slavery was Harriet Tubman. She risked her life to help people escape slavery in the 1850s and 1860s. Now the U.S. is remembering her courage in a special way. Two national parks have been named in her honor. They are the first National Historical Parks to honor a Black woman.

Harriet Tubman was born in Maryland around 1820. At that time, slavery was legal in Maryland and many other states, mostly in the South. Tubman and her family were enslaved on a plantation. They were forced to pick crops and do other jobs.

Tubman escaped to Pennsylvania in 1849. To get there, she used what’s known as the Underground Railroad. It wasn’t a real railroad, but a series of secret routes. The routes led from the Southern states to the Northern states, where enslaved people could be free.

For enslaved people, the journey was full of danger. If found by slave catchers, they were returned to their owners and often punished. It was a risk Tubman was willing to take.

But once Tubman was free, she worried about the people she had left behind—and decided to rescue them. Over the next decade, she guided at least 70 other enslaved people to freedom, including much of her family. In 1863, Tubman helped lead a raid on several plantations in South Carolina, freeing hundreds more.

Today, Tubman is remembered as one of the most famous leaders on the Underground Railroad. The new national parks will help tell her story. One is in Maryland, where she grew up. There, visitors can see the woods where she made her escape. The other is in Auburn, New York, where Tubman lived when she got older. People can visit her home and burial place.

For Tubman’s descendants, the parks are especially exciting news. One of them is 10-year-old Maya Hawkins-Bailey of Maryland. “Harriet got to freedom and she could have stayed safe there, but she went back for others,” says Maya. “I consider her my hero.”