slow speed please. American accent if possible
Harriet Tubman : a great figure in the US History
Harriet Tubman escaped from slavery in the Southern United States. She then helped lead many other enslaved people to freedom. She also served the Union during the American Civil War.
Harriet Tubman was born in 1820 in Maryland, where she grew up in an enslaved family of nine children. Her name at first was Araminta Ross. She later changed it to Harriet, which was her mother’s name.
In 1844, aged 24, she married John Tubman, who was a free African American. Five years later, after she had heard she was going to be sold, she escaped without her husband to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she became a “conductor” for the “Underground Railroad”. The railroad was a secret network, which helped enslaved people find their way to freedom. By 1857, she had freed dozens of enslaved people, including her own parents. She said that she “never lost a passenger,” even though slaveholders offered large rewards for her capture.
During the American Civil War, Tubman went to South Carolina with the Union Army. She served as a nurse and a scout. She even led raids against the Confederates.
After the Civil War had ended, Tubman settled with her parents in Auburn, New York, where she worked for racial justice and for women’s rights. She believed the two struggles were closely linked. In 1908 she opened a home for aged and poor African Americans. She died in Auburn on March 10th, 1913, at the age of 93.
Did you know ? Harriet Tubman was known as the “Moses of her people”.
