Latest / Stuff You Should Know / The Harriet Tubman Story

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The Harriet Tubman Story · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, we're going on tour in eighteen and where
0:03
Speaker 1: are we going? On April four, we're going to be
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Speaker 1: in Boston at the Wilburg. You can get tickets at
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Speaker 1: the Wilber dot com, Chuck. And then on April five,
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Speaker 1: we're gonna be in d C at the Lincoln Theater
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Speaker 1: and you can get tickets for that at ticket fly
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Speaker 1: that's right. And then we're going to two new cities,
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Speaker 1: we're gonna be in Cleveland and you can get tickets
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Speaker 1: there at playhouse Square dot org. And then there's one more, Chuck,
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Speaker 1: that's right. We're gonna wrap it up in Denver, specifically Inglewood,
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Speaker 1: Colorado at the Gothic Theater on June and possibly adding
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Speaker 1: a show on the twenty seven. Stay tuned for that, yep.
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Speaker 1: And you can get ticks at a x S dot com.
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Speaker 1: So come see us live. We'll have a good time.
0:44
Speaker 1: Come on out. Welcome to Stuff you should know from
0:49
Speaker 1: House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
0:58
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark and they're is Charles w Chuck Bryant,
1:01
Speaker 1: and there's Jerry over there, and this is stuff you
1:05
Speaker 1: should know in Black History month. Toda, how you doing? Man?
1:11
Speaker 1: I'm tired? Are you? You've been burning the candles at
1:14
Speaker 1: all three ends? Uh? I didn't know candles had three ends.
1:17
Speaker 1: And look look at it when they work as hard
1:19
Speaker 1: as you check, they got three inns. So bright, How
1:22
Speaker 1: are you doing? You holding up at least? I don't know.
1:27
Speaker 1: It's TVD I Now you see these uh see these circles. Yeah,
1:32
Speaker 1: they're a little pronounced. I wasn't gonna say anything, but
1:35
Speaker 1: that's fine. Yeah. I guess when that circles their half moons?
1:40
Speaker 1: Yeah there, um, well they're half moons the size of
1:43
Speaker 1: half dollars. A lot of people say circles into their
1:45
Speaker 1: eyes when they're not to circles. I wonder if they're
1:48
Speaker 1: just seeing the rest of it, like their mind is
1:51
Speaker 1: filling in the rest. Maybe they're all just insane seeing
1:55
Speaker 1: something we're not maybe so well. At any rate, we're
1:58
Speaker 1: all pulling for you. You need any super anything. Now,
2:01
Speaker 1: Jerry's got that as you can smell. Yeah, it's kind
2:03
Speaker 1: of nice. This this stage chairs. What is that? It's her? Well,
2:10
Speaker 1: she won't talk so right, She's just she's doing sign
2:14
Speaker 1: language for Ramen. I love Rahman. Don't you sure? Nothing
2:21
Speaker 1: perched up like Ramen except a really great history story.
2:28
Speaker 1: That's right, we're gonna do that today. Way to go
2:32
Speaker 1: choosing this one, Chuck, is this was this a request
2:35
Speaker 1: of yours or did just so happened it was on
2:37
Speaker 1: the site? No, I just you know, I've been wanting
2:39
Speaker 1: to cover more famous women in history, and um, obviously
2:44
Speaker 1: during Black History months, this is a perfect time to
2:47
Speaker 1: talk about Harriet Tubman. And this article points out and
2:51
Speaker 1: I thought very astutely like her legend in her her
2:58
Speaker 1: icon ship, I I kind of classic could chip Yes,
3:05
Speaker 1: uh is so great that? Um? I think sometimes a
3:08
Speaker 1: lot of people may not even know the nitty gritty
3:11
Speaker 1: details of her life, you know, I mean, I I know,
3:14
Speaker 1: I didn't. I I was, you know, raised in America
3:17
Speaker 1: in the seventies and eighties as a school kid into
3:20
Speaker 1: the mid nineties, we could even say, um, and I
3:24
Speaker 1: like I knew of Harriet Tubman. I was taught to
3:26
Speaker 1: honor and respect her for what she did as a
3:29
Speaker 1: conductor on the underground railroad. What I didn't know is
3:32
Speaker 1: that that was about a third of the reason why
3:36
Speaker 1: she's famous and legendary. Yeah. I mean the school lessons
3:40
Speaker 1: were shamefully short, because that's about all I learned was
3:45
Speaker 1: just about the underground railroad her her role in it
3:49
Speaker 1: to a very limited degree. Um that they taught us
3:53
Speaker 1: that it's not her role, and that was kind of it. Yeah.
3:56
Speaker 1: But the fact that, like I mean, there's so much
3:59
Speaker 1: more to this woman's life. She just did so much.
4:02
Speaker 1: She packed so much life in, whether it was by
4:05
Speaker 1: her own accord or against her will, she just had
4:07
Speaker 1: a very long, full life. Um. And the fact that
4:11
Speaker 1: we know about the the life of a nineteenth mid
4:17
Speaker 1: nineteenth century black woman who was born a slave in Maryland,
4:23
Speaker 1: that we know this much about it really speaks volumes.
4:25
Speaker 1: I'm glad that there's this much out there, and it
4:27
Speaker 1: seems like there's more and more being added to it
4:29
Speaker 1: every day. Yeah, it definitely helps that. Uh. In the
4:32
Speaker 1: eighteen sixties, there was a very famous biography written by
4:36
Speaker 1: Sarah Hopkins Bradford, one of the earlier biographies in UM.
4:41
Speaker 1: Since then, we've learned some more stuff and cleaned up
4:43
Speaker 1: a bit of the truth from the legend. But you know,
4:47
Speaker 1: it only got better yeah. I mean, if it's just
4:50
Speaker 1: the stuff that is verifiable fact is still just astounding.
4:53
Speaker 1: It kind of makes me feel like a lump and
4:55
Speaker 1: a loser. Look, I'm not I'm not doing much with
4:58
Speaker 1: my life. Well, we're teaching people about Harriet tubban It lea,
5:02
Speaker 1: so it counts for something, I guess. All right, so
5:05
Speaker 1: you want to start at the beginning. Yeah, in the beginning,
5:09
Speaker 1: of course, because Harriet tubman Um was born. When she
5:14
Speaker 1: was born, there weren't great birth records for for black
5:18
Speaker 1: people in the United States at the time, so we
5:20
Speaker 1: don't know for sure when she was born. Um eighteen
5:24
Speaker 1: twenty five is what she has claimed on various documents
5:26
Speaker 1: later in life. But I've seen everywhere from eighteen eighty five,
5:31
Speaker 1: so somewhere in that range. Yeah, this article in how
5:34
Speaker 1: staff Work says eighteen twenty two. I've seen that in
5:37
Speaker 1: various places too, and that is shameful in and of itself. Yeah,
5:41
Speaker 1: but again, like it's not like the people who were
5:44
Speaker 1: not keeping records on slave births at the time. We're like, well,
5:47
Speaker 1: this lady is actually going to grow up to be
5:49
Speaker 1: one of the most legendary women in American history, so
5:52
Speaker 1: we should probably note this. Um. The thing is is,
5:55
Speaker 1: even though they didn't, they didn't note her birth because
5:58
Speaker 1: they didn't realize how famous she was going to be.
6:01
Speaker 1: She started to make a name for herself pretty early
6:04
Speaker 1: on in life. Um. She had about five years to
6:08
Speaker 1: kind of be raised as a child before she was
6:10
Speaker 1: hired out as a basically an infant rocker. Her job
6:15
Speaker 1: was to stay up at night and rock and infant
6:18
Speaker 1: to make sure that the infant didn't cry. And every
6:21
Speaker 1: time the infant cried, she would, um get a lashing
6:25
Speaker 1: from what I understand. Yeah, and just reading through kind
6:28
Speaker 1: of her early life, it seems like, um, well let
6:33
Speaker 1: me couch that for one second. She was one of
6:36
Speaker 1: nine children born in like you said, in Maryland and
6:39
Speaker 1: Dorchester County unless they pronounce it Dorster Doyly Doyle County
6:47
Speaker 1: which is along the eastern shore, to Benjamin Ross and
6:50
Speaker 1: Harriet uh Rit Green h and her she was actually
6:54
Speaker 1: born are very beautiful name, are Amanta Ross. Yeah, I
6:59
Speaker 1: had no idea about that, did you know? And her
7:01
Speaker 1: parents called her Minty Minty Ross, which is just a
7:05
Speaker 1: very kind of cute nickname for a kid, it is.
7:08
Speaker 1: And she was actually a third generation slave in America.
7:13
Speaker 1: Her grandmother on her maternal side was named Modesty, and
7:19
Speaker 1: her family has done some research and have concluded that
7:21
Speaker 1: Modesty was almost certainly um from the Ashanti group and
7:25
Speaker 1: was stolen either from the Ivory Coast or Ghana and
7:30
Speaker 1: then was taken eventually to Maryland where she was owned
7:35
Speaker 1: by a guy named Athol Pattison. Is that right, Pattison?
7:39
Speaker 1: I think so. The thing about that and the reason
7:42
Speaker 1: why this guy really kind of figures into the story
7:44
Speaker 1: in a cringe worthy way. Athol Pattison um who then
7:50
Speaker 1: owned Harriet Tubman's grandmother and then mother, and then Harriet
7:54
Speaker 1: and her siblings because they were all from the same line.
7:59
Speaker 1: He had in his will that when when any of
8:03
Speaker 1: them turned forty five they were free, they were what
8:06
Speaker 1: was called manumitted. The problem is that he was dead,
8:11
Speaker 1: so he wasn't around to enforce his will, and that
8:13
Speaker 1: actually never happened. So even though on paper, legally Harriet Tubman,
8:18
Speaker 1: all of her siblings, her mother, and her grandmother all
8:20
Speaker 1: should have been manumitted whenever they hit age forty five,
8:24
Speaker 1: absolutely none of them were. Yeah, and her father did
8:27
Speaker 1: gain his freedom, but was still married to a woman
8:29
Speaker 1: who uh did not have her freedom. Uh. And you
8:33
Speaker 1: don't hear about this a lot in in the history
8:35
Speaker 1: books where families were um divided between free and owned, um,
8:42
Speaker 1: which makes a bad situation even worse, you know. Yeah,
8:44
Speaker 1: And I'd like to look into that because that kind
8:46
Speaker 1: of popped up here there and almost casually, you know,
8:49
Speaker 1: like without much explanation. So I wonder what that was like.
8:53
Speaker 1: Was it was it just like, you know, you both
8:55
Speaker 1: went to work and did basically the same labor, but
8:58
Speaker 1: one of you, um was paid for it. Uh? Was
9:02
Speaker 1: there like less like physical punishment or coercion? Like what
9:07
Speaker 1: was the distinction? Yeah, I'm not really sure, um, but
9:12
Speaker 1: like you are, you know, what I was setting up
9:14
Speaker 1: was after she worked as a as a childcare baby
9:19
Speaker 1: rocker of sorts and got whipped on the neck by
9:22
Speaker 1: the woman of the house every time her baby cried,
9:26
Speaker 1: which that's you know, that's a whole other thing. Yeah,
9:29
Speaker 1: and again she's five at the time, five years old. Um.
9:33
Speaker 1: She went on to work on the farm later on
9:36
Speaker 1: when she got a little older, and by all accounts, UM,
9:39
Speaker 1: for the rest of her her working life, her you know,
9:43
Speaker 1: as a slave, was much preferred working on the farm
9:46
Speaker 1: and basically like, I don't want to work for these
9:48
Speaker 1: white women. Um, they're worse than the men, right, or
9:52
Speaker 1: at least in her case. Plus also, I mean she
9:55
Speaker 1: was pretty able bodied. She supposedly was super muscular from
10:00
Speaker 1: doing um physical labor for so many years. It was
10:02
Speaker 1: pretty good at it. Five tall and um from what
10:06
Speaker 1: I could tell, just as strong as could be. Right,
10:09
Speaker 1: So um she the the owners of her family, um
10:15
Speaker 1: Ethyl Pattison's daughter and son in law. They were um
10:19
Speaker 1: kind of like Michael Fossbender's family in twelve years of
10:24
Speaker 1: slave They were not at all wealthy plantation owners, but
10:28
Speaker 1: they were just out of the social hierarchy at the
10:32
Speaker 1: time able to afford and keep slaves. But rather, since
10:37
Speaker 1: they didn't have a huge plantation for their slaves to
10:40
Speaker 1: work on, they would hire them out. That's how, um
10:44
Speaker 1: how Harry ended up like working at age five rocking babies,
10:48
Speaker 1: or she was hired out to go get muskrats out
10:51
Speaker 1: of traps and swamps and stuff like that. Just like basically,
10:54
Speaker 1: whatever somebody needed an extra hand for they would contact
10:58
Speaker 1: this family and the family would hire out their slaves
11:01
Speaker 1: just to make ends meet. Basically, Yeah, that's right, and
11:04
Speaker 1: I think most of her brother and sisters did the
11:07
Speaker 1: same thing from what I could tell. Uh. And you know,
11:09
Speaker 1: she grew up working and eventually they brought her inside
11:12
Speaker 1: his housemaid, even though she preferred to be outside. And
11:16
Speaker 1: once again, once she was inside, she would be whipped
11:20
Speaker 1: from the mistress of the house if her work in
11:22
Speaker 1: her dusting and her cooking and dishwashing was not adequate
11:26
Speaker 1: enough for her. Uh. And you know she suffered. It
11:30
Speaker 1: was just part of daily life basically until this incident
11:33
Speaker 1: as a teenager um really kind of changed things for her. Um.
11:39
Speaker 1: She was in a store, uh, and there was a
11:41
Speaker 1: fugitive slave that was I couldn't quite tells in the
11:45
Speaker 1: store or just trying to get out of the store.
11:47
Speaker 1: But her overseer went to confront this fugitive slave, and Harriet,
11:53
Speaker 1: I guess got the bug of trying to help a
11:56
Speaker 1: slave get away early on and literally got in this
11:59
Speaker 1: man's way to let this fugitive slave get away. He
12:03
Speaker 1: already had this weight, this iron that he was I
12:06
Speaker 1: guess trying to swing and throw at this fugitive slave,
12:08
Speaker 1: and he end up hitting Harriet in the head uh
12:12
Speaker 1: and caused a really severe head injury to her. Yeah.
12:15
Speaker 1: For the rest of her life. She had a traumatic
12:18
Speaker 1: brain injury, because I mean, getting hit in the head
12:20
Speaker 1: with a two pound weight, that's gonna that's bad enough.
12:24
Speaker 1: But the fact that's happening in the middle of the
12:25
Speaker 1: nineteenth century and there's basically nothing they can do for
12:29
Speaker 1: you medically, that yeah, you know, they didn't exactly send
12:33
Speaker 1: her to the best hospital in town. So she as
12:36
Speaker 1: a result of that brain injury, it's been later diagnosed
12:39
Speaker 1: that she developed narcolepsy cataplexy. UM. They called it at
12:45
Speaker 1: the time sleeping sickness. But she developed this um, this
12:50
Speaker 1: thing where she would just fall asleep out of nowhere.
12:54
Speaker 1: No matter what she was doing, she would just fall
12:56
Speaker 1: dead asleep and would stay that way for hours sometimes
13:01
Speaker 1: and could could not be roused, Like you could not
13:03
Speaker 1: wake her up at the time. And then during these periods, UM,
13:07
Speaker 1: she said that she would have very vivid, like religious dreams,
13:11
Speaker 1: and UM, they kind of attribute her super religiousness. I
13:18
Speaker 1: guess you would call it that that really she carried
13:21
Speaker 1: throughout her life kind of came from these dreams. She
13:24
Speaker 1: was an extremely devout religious person, and UM, a lot
13:28
Speaker 1: of it was this idea that she was being kind
13:30
Speaker 1: of personally guided by God through her life thanks to
13:33
Speaker 1: those dreams, right and this UM that anarcalypse here. The
13:38
Speaker 1: repercussions from being hit in the head like that did
13:41
Speaker 1: not serve her well in her life as a slave either,
13:44
Speaker 1: as you can imagine, UM, her overseers did not. UM.
13:50
Speaker 1: They were not sympathetic to the fact that she was
13:52
Speaker 1: injured and could not be roused. Uh you know what
13:56
Speaker 1: I'm saying. Yeah, No, she was like recovering from her
13:59
Speaker 1: head injury, still in They were trying to sell her
14:01
Speaker 1: but couldn't find any buyers. And then I also is
14:04
Speaker 1: kind of UM pointed to as one of the driving
14:07
Speaker 1: forces for what made her escape finally when she's like,
14:10
Speaker 1: I'm out of here. She was very worried about being
14:13
Speaker 1: sold off and separated from her family. So she would
14:16
Speaker 1: have rather had control of the situation and separated herself
14:20
Speaker 1: from her family. She could come back if she needed to.
14:24
Speaker 1: So she was worried about being sold off, um, because
14:28
Speaker 1: she just couldn't work like the others anymore. And she
14:32
Speaker 1: took off an eighteen March eighteen forty nine for the
14:35
Speaker 1: first time she escaped. Yeah, and she was married by
14:39
Speaker 1: this point. In eighteen forty four, she married a freeman
14:42
Speaker 1: named John Tubman Uh and the marriage wouldn't last long,
14:46
Speaker 1: but she did keep that name and then began, and
14:49
Speaker 1: I'm not sure why, but began using her mother's first name,
14:52
Speaker 1: which was Harriet. So that's how she became Harriet Tubman Uh.
14:56
Speaker 1: And her husband refused to go basically when she said,
15:00
Speaker 1: I'm getting out of here, so she got her brother's
15:03
Speaker 1: been in her Henry to run away with her. UM.
15:07
Speaker 1: After a couple of weeks on the lamb uh Ben
15:10
Speaker 1: in Henry. You know, it was a scary life out
15:13
Speaker 1: there as a fugitive slave. UM. And they said, you
15:16
Speaker 1: know what, I'm gonna go back, and she said, uh, Well,
15:20
Speaker 1: she went back with them initially, but then said you
15:22
Speaker 1: know what, I'm I'm out of here. And thence time
15:25
Speaker 1: she went all by herself. Yeah. So the following September,
15:28
Speaker 1: September seventy nine, she left again by herself, and she um.
15:33
Speaker 1: Basically it was a rehearsal for what she would do
15:37
Speaker 1: later on as a conductor on the underground railroad. She
15:41
Speaker 1: traveled at night. She used the North Star as a guide. UM.
15:46
Speaker 1: She stayed during the day with Quaker families who were
15:49
Speaker 1: abolitionists that would hide her um under under the threat
15:53
Speaker 1: of persecution and prosecution. I should say this is a
15:57
Speaker 1: teen forty nine, so at the time the laws weren't
15:59
Speaker 1: quite a strict but as we'll see, they definitely got stricter,
16:02
Speaker 1: but it was still like you could, you know, go
16:04
Speaker 1: to jail or get in trouble for housing a fugitive
16:07
Speaker 1: slave to these people were definitely putting their next on
16:09
Speaker 1: the line to help her, And eventually she made her
16:12
Speaker 1: way through Delaware and into Pennsylvania, which was a free state,
16:16
Speaker 1: um and I don't know if it was ever a
16:19
Speaker 1: slate state. I think it was probably founded as a
16:22
Speaker 1: free state. And when she got into Pennsylvania, she compared
16:25
Speaker 1: it to to showing up in heaven. Basically, Yeah, the
16:28
Speaker 1: sun came like gold through the trees and over the fields,
16:31
Speaker 1: and I felt like I was in heaven, is the
16:32
Speaker 1: direct quote, which is just a wonderful, wonderful thing to say.
16:37
Speaker 1: And like, I can't imagine the feeling after being on
16:40
Speaker 1: her own. Her husband wouldn't come, her brothers went back
16:44
Speaker 1: to be so brave uh to go on her own,
16:49
Speaker 1: although she did get help along the way, uh, and
16:51
Speaker 1: to finally reach Pennsylvania. Man, It's just unbelievable. So the
16:55
Speaker 1: thing is, though, is she apparently always said later in life,
17:00
Speaker 1: and a lot of this, we should say, is from
17:01
Speaker 1: that biography of her um from Sarah Hopkins Bradford, which
17:06
Speaker 1: was contemporary. It was done while she was alive in
17:08
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty nine, so this is her telling her own story.
17:12
Speaker 1: But she said basically right out of the gate, you know,
17:15
Speaker 1: she was glad to be in Pennsylvania, but there was
17:17
Speaker 1: a part of her missing, like she left her family behind.
17:20
Speaker 1: Her husband was still back there. She never had kids. Uh,
17:25
Speaker 1: she never gave birth to a kid, but later on
17:27
Speaker 1: she would adopt a kid. But she had like nieces
17:29
Speaker 1: and nephews there, um, and she just felt like her
17:33
Speaker 1: her family was back there and they needed to be
17:35
Speaker 1: free as well. So she resolved basically from the outset
17:39
Speaker 1: to get them whenever she could. And that's a good
17:43
Speaker 1: place to take a break. I thought so too, because
17:45
Speaker 1: it sets up her work on the underground railroad and
17:48
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that right after this, all right, Chuck,
18:16
Speaker 1: So we're back eighteen forty nine, and uh, late eighteen
18:21
Speaker 1: forty nine, Harriet Tubman has escaped and made it to Pennsylvania. Um,
18:26
Speaker 1: and she settled in Philadelphia. She got work as a housekeeper,
18:32
Speaker 1: a cook, and she was getting paid now for doing labor,
18:36
Speaker 1: which was totally novel to her from what I can tell.
18:39
Speaker 1: And what she did with this money rather than like
18:43
Speaker 1: go buy some nice stuff or have a ham dinner
18:47
Speaker 1: or do whatever with it, she saved it to fund
18:51
Speaker 1: her trip back into the slaved states, into Maryland below
18:56
Speaker 1: the Mason Dixon line, to retrieve her family. That's what
18:59
Speaker 1: she did with her me. Yes, she didn't even get
19:01
Speaker 1: Eagles tickets and it would, uh, and it would it
19:05
Speaker 1: would actually basically that's the that's the basis of what
19:08
Speaker 1: she did with their money for the rest of her
19:10
Speaker 1: working life, which is to say the rest of her life.
19:13
Speaker 1: She worked her whole life to make ends meet, and
19:16
Speaker 1: most of the time it was because she could can
19:18
Speaker 1: she could support herself, but she was also supporting other
19:22
Speaker 1: people as well, or trying to help other other slaves escape. Yeah.
19:26
Speaker 1: So the underground Railroad, Um, we should probably do a
19:29
Speaker 1: full episode on that at some point, But oh, my friend,
19:31
Speaker 1: we did, did we? June two thousand and eleven? Well, no, wonder,
19:35
Speaker 1: I don't remember that. It was a good one I
19:37
Speaker 1: was six years ago. That was good. Well, we got
19:40
Speaker 1: to bring it out for s Y s K select
19:42
Speaker 1: for sure. In fact, maybe we should do that this month.
19:45
Speaker 1: Let's do it so I do remember now. It was
19:50
Speaker 1: a good one. It was. But the underground railroad was
19:52
Speaker 1: a it was. It worked differently depending on who you are.
19:58
Speaker 1: There was not one like growing up as a kid
20:01
Speaker 1: always thought it was some um direct line. That was.
20:05
Speaker 1: They always used the same path. But the underground railroad
20:08
Speaker 1: depending on who you were as a conductor, which is
20:12
Speaker 1: what they called them, uh, you had your own connections basically,
20:16
Speaker 1: and and like you said earlier, sometimes they were these
20:18
Speaker 1: Quaker families, but um they were always friendlies who would
20:23
Speaker 1: help put you up and guide you from spot to
20:25
Speaker 1: spot along the way. Um. Harriet Tubman ended up using
20:30
Speaker 1: because she knew these um this land along the coast.
20:34
Speaker 1: She would go the route that she knew best as
20:38
Speaker 1: a friendly area. And they had all these ways of
20:40
Speaker 1: communicating in front of their UH owners and their overseers.
20:46
Speaker 1: A lot of times through song. They would use religious
20:49
Speaker 1: passages and sing things uh, sing these biblical songs that
20:53
Speaker 1: had all these secret messages in it. And of course
20:56
Speaker 1: all the while the overseers have no idea that they're
20:58
Speaker 1: actually sending secret mets. It just a one in there. Uh. Yeah,
21:01
Speaker 1: one of them, Chuck was um there that they were
21:04
Speaker 1: headed to Canaan, which is meaning you're heading to the
21:08
Speaker 1: afterlife heaven, I guess. And what that actually meant in
21:11
Speaker 1: code for the slaves who were preparing to escape was
21:14
Speaker 1: that they were heading towards Canada, which was about as
21:19
Speaker 1: free as it gets, it turns out. Yeah. Uh, she
21:22
Speaker 1: would go Uh generally during the fall and during the
21:26
Speaker 1: spring because the days were shorter and the weather was
21:30
Speaker 1: a little more friendly. Um, she would she would leave
21:34
Speaker 1: on a Saturday because Sunday the was a day of
21:38
Speaker 1: rest for the owner, and they wouldn't find out until
21:40
Speaker 1: Monday morning, and it wouldn't be posted and published till Monday. Uh,
21:44
Speaker 1: probably not even Monday morning, you know, because it's not
21:46
Speaker 1: like it was hot off the presses. It would probably
21:48
Speaker 1: wouldn't even get until later on Monday. Right. Well, if
21:50
Speaker 1: they only published the slave notices once a week, that
21:53
Speaker 1: means that the ones that came in on Monday wouldn't
21:55
Speaker 1: get published to the following Monday. So we give them
21:57
Speaker 1: like a full week of of time to escape. Oh
22:01
Speaker 1: did they only publish on Monday? That's what I got.
22:03
Speaker 1: Oh okay, I didn't see that, So yeah, so she
22:06
Speaker 1: was she was a pretty sharp tack. She would also
22:08
Speaker 1: say I'm gonna meet you here. She would pass information
22:11
Speaker 1: along to the slaves who were preparing to escape that
22:14
Speaker 1: she was going to conduct where to meet, and it
22:16
Speaker 1: was um invariably several miles away from where they lived,
22:20
Speaker 1: so that it would become very clear if they had
22:22
Speaker 1: been followed by the time they met up with her.
22:25
Speaker 1: She also kept a pistol very famously with her, not
22:29
Speaker 1: not just to protect herself for the people that she
22:32
Speaker 1: was conducting, but also to let the people she was
22:35
Speaker 1: conducting know that if they decided they were going to
22:38
Speaker 1: turn back, she was going to shoot him because she
22:41
Speaker 1: just couldn't risk them giving them up and betraying the
22:44
Speaker 1: rest of the group. So it was once you were
22:47
Speaker 1: on on the underground railroad with Harriet Tubman, there was
22:50
Speaker 1: no going back. You were going on until you reached
22:53
Speaker 1: a free state or were captured. It was one of
22:54
Speaker 1: those two. The Tubman train goes in one direction. Yes,
22:59
Speaker 1: that's what that was what she put on her cards,
23:01
Speaker 1: that's right, and T shirts Actually I think she had
23:03
Speaker 1: t shirts too. All right, So she's like you said,
23:07
Speaker 1: she doesn't make a trip. She makes trip after trip
23:11
Speaker 1: after trip. Uh. There's a lot of speculation on exactly
23:14
Speaker 1: how many people I believe in the original biography, and
23:18
Speaker 1: the number you will hear a lot is three hundred.
23:21
Speaker 1: But they have done some investigating since then. Uh. And
23:24
Speaker 1: some people have said it may have been like seventy people,
23:27
Speaker 1: with another seventy that she kind of trained and taught
23:30
Speaker 1: and empowered to leave. Um. But either way, it's a
23:34
Speaker 1: lot of folks. Yeah, for sure, it's thirteen trips too.
23:38
Speaker 1: I mean, like that's that's thirteen trips back to where
23:42
Speaker 1: she was considered a fugitive slave and eventually grow had
23:47
Speaker 1: a pretty sizeable bounty on her head. I saw forty
23:49
Speaker 1: thou dollars, which is about a million dollars in today's money,
23:54
Speaker 1: which means that there were there was a million dollars
23:58
Speaker 1: for her capture and she still never got caught. People
24:02
Speaker 1: still never got her from Philadelphia. Um, because just as
24:05
Speaker 1: she would steal down to the below the Mason Dixon line,
24:09
Speaker 1: slave steelers would steal up above the Mason Dixon line
24:13
Speaker 1: and capture slaves and bring them back, especially ones that
24:17
Speaker 1: had a huge bounty on their head. So the fact
24:19
Speaker 1: that she had never been captured, and that she kept
24:22
Speaker 1: going down below the Mason Dixon line, so supposedly at
24:26
Speaker 1: one point she she had to go through her old
24:29
Speaker 1: town where she was where she had escaped from back
24:32
Speaker 1: in eighteen forty nine. And the fact that she kept
24:35
Speaker 1: doing the stuff and her legend grew like she just
24:37
Speaker 1: became well legend like and in her own time. Yeah,
24:42
Speaker 1: and this is um. After eighteen fifty you kind of
24:44
Speaker 1: hinted that things got even worse. That's when they passed
24:47
Speaker 1: Congress past the Fugitive Slave Act, and this basically required
24:51
Speaker 1: all citizens to assist in recapturing fugitive slaves. Um, it's
24:58
Speaker 1: not like you had to work full time doing this,
25:00
Speaker 1: but if you knew about it and you didn't do
25:02
Speaker 1: something to make it happen, then you were then liable.
25:05
Speaker 1: So basically everybody was, uh, unless you know, they were
25:10
Speaker 1: confirmed friendly, everybody was after them, right for sure. And
25:15
Speaker 1: the that that Fugitive Slave Act, in addition to um, well,
25:20
Speaker 1: it did a lot of things right So before it
25:22
Speaker 1: was kind of like if you were in a northern
25:23
Speaker 1: free state, the fugitive slave laws didn't really apply to
25:27
Speaker 1: you because you were in a free state. The fact
25:30
Speaker 1: that that Fugitive Slave Act made it a federal law.
25:32
Speaker 1: Now everybody in the US was subject to these this
25:36
Speaker 1: Fugitive Slave Act, and it was one of those laws
25:38
Speaker 1: where you could be punished for not doing anything like
25:41
Speaker 1: just looking the other way. You could end up in
25:44
Speaker 1: jail for six months and be fined a thousand dollars UM.
25:49
Speaker 1: So anybody who was already helping on the underground railroad
25:54
Speaker 1: was at risk before, but now they were really at
25:56
Speaker 1: even more substantial risk after eighteen fifty, and as a result,
26:00
Speaker 1: the end of the underground railroad got pushed further up
26:03
Speaker 1: from Pennsylvania up to New York all the way up
26:05
Speaker 1: to Canada. That was the end of the line for
26:08
Speaker 1: the underground railroad after eighteen fifty. Yeah. So as this
26:12
Speaker 1: is going on, as she is over a decade going
26:16
Speaker 1: back and forth down the eastern shore of Maryland freeing slaves,
26:21
Speaker 1: she is also um successfully speaking at abolitionist fundraising meetings. Um.
26:28
Speaker 1: She was well known and they would ask you know
26:30
Speaker 1: she was. She was a public speaker. UM. Obviously very
26:34
Speaker 1: much on the download because she was a super big
26:37
Speaker 1: target for the slave catchers. Like you were saying, but uh,
26:41
Speaker 1: this only just like enriched her legend that she would
26:44
Speaker 1: take breaks from rescuing slaves to go speak at a
26:47
Speaker 1: at a fundraising meeting. Yeah. And one of the reasons
26:49
Speaker 1: she was doing that in the first place was to
26:52
Speaker 1: make money to fund her work on the underground railroad. Yeah.
26:57
Speaker 1: That's pretty impressive. Yeah, absolutely, because I mean, I imagine
27:01
Speaker 1: the most of those families were doing this for nothing,
27:05
Speaker 1: but I imagine they probably had to pay people off
27:07
Speaker 1: along the way. Yeah, especially in Canada. Um, apparently you
27:12
Speaker 1: could bribe the border guards pretty easily to say, oh,
27:16
Speaker 1: you're visiting, huh, well, enjoy your time in Canada, and right,
27:21
Speaker 1: and people would settle right across the the Niagara River
27:24
Speaker 1: and St. Catherine's, Ontario is where a lot of them
27:27
Speaker 1: ended up. Alright. So, in eighteen sixty, a very very
27:30
Speaker 1: famous incident, and this is one of the most one
27:33
Speaker 1: of the most well documented stories of the time. Um.
27:37
Speaker 1: There this was in Troy, New York, and there was
27:40
Speaker 1: a captured slave named Charles Noll and he that was
27:45
Speaker 1: his real name. I can't remember the name that he
27:47
Speaker 1: had been given, but his real name was Charles Noll.
27:49
Speaker 1: They were trying to get him back to Virginia after
27:52
Speaker 1: he had been captured as a fugitive, and everybody knew
27:56
Speaker 1: about it, and uh, including Harriet Tubman. So she just
27:59
Speaker 1: got ased herself as a little old lady. Um and
28:02
Speaker 1: if you've seen pictures of her, almost all of them
28:05
Speaker 1: are as a little old lady. It's kind of hard
28:07
Speaker 1: to picture her as a young woman. But she dressed
28:10
Speaker 1: herself up as the little old lady that she would
28:12
Speaker 1: become in photos. She slipped into a building, a government building,
28:18
Speaker 1: in disguise, and then basically gave the signal to all
28:23
Speaker 1: of these people in town who mobbed as soon as
28:26
Speaker 1: Unal was brought out under the streets. They basically just
28:30
Speaker 1: mobbed him and took him away. Yes, she won't get
28:33
Speaker 1: him a right, No, she went swarm swarm, but it worked,
28:41
Speaker 1: and I guess they just had enough enough people to
28:43
Speaker 1: overpower him and whisked him away on a riverboat. Yeah,
28:46
Speaker 1: and these were federal marshals that they overpowered. Yeah, Like
28:50
Speaker 1: it was like, yeah, we're we'll be taking this guy
28:52
Speaker 1: from you. Amazing. That was in eighteen sixty, he said, Yeah,
28:57
Speaker 1: that was the same year I believe that she did
28:59
Speaker 1: her last trip on the underground railroad. Her second to
29:03
Speaker 1: last trip was her parents, who were very elderly at
29:06
Speaker 1: the time, but they ended up settling in St. Catherine's,
29:09
Speaker 1: Ontario at first, and then her mother was like, it's
29:13
Speaker 1: too cold here, so Harriet moved them down to Auburn,
29:16
Speaker 1: New York, to upstate New York where the winters are
29:19
Speaker 1: nice and right, yeah, exactly, almost muggy, you know. Um,
29:23
Speaker 1: but that so that was her penultimate trip on the
29:26
Speaker 1: underground roroad. The last one she went to go get
29:29
Speaker 1: her sister Rachel. She had been trying to reach for
29:32
Speaker 1: a decade, and she went back in eighteen sixty to
29:36
Speaker 1: get her and found that Rachel had died. Actually, so
29:40
Speaker 1: she um, she ended up taking a family that was
29:45
Speaker 1: prepared to leave. Um, the Annals. Did you read about them? Yeah,
29:49
Speaker 1: I mean Harriet Tubman was not one to waste a
29:51
Speaker 1: trip down there. As sad as she was about her sister.
29:55
Speaker 1: She's like, all right, let's I'll take you guys. Yeah.
29:57
Speaker 1: So the Annals family was from and I can tell
30:00
Speaker 1: a younger couple with an infant child, and um, Harriet
30:05
Speaker 1: was like, we're gonna have the dope up the baby
30:07
Speaker 1: because we can't have that baby crying. So I just
30:10
Speaker 1: happened to have some tincture of opium and we'll give
30:13
Speaker 1: the baby some of that. So they kept the baby
30:16
Speaker 1: pretty high on this trip to make sure it didn't
30:19
Speaker 1: cry and give away their their position. And that was
30:22
Speaker 1: her last one. Eight sixty. Yeah, and so like we said,
30:26
Speaker 1: they relocated from Canada to Auburn, New York. And um,
30:31
Speaker 1: she bought, she bought land. She was a landowner, uh
30:36
Speaker 1: remarkably in the eighteen fifties. Uh in Auburn. She bought
30:39
Speaker 1: seven acres of land at a very friendly price from
30:42
Speaker 1: William Seward right, and he was the guy who bought
30:46
Speaker 1: Alaska later, that's right. So yeah, so she's a landowner now,
30:50
Speaker 1: which is pretty significant. Like you're saying, should we take
30:52
Speaker 1: another break, I think we shall, all right, we'll we'll
30:56
Speaker 1: finish up with um geez the rest of our life,
30:58
Speaker 1: which was also remarkable. So it took the end of
31:28
Speaker 1: that underground railroad that was basically where my study as
31:32
Speaker 1: a younger lad of um Harriet Tubman left off the
31:36
Speaker 1: rest of our I had no idea about, did you M.
31:39
Speaker 1: I had heard things here and there but I for
31:41
Speaker 1: sure was not taught this in elementary or high school.
31:44
Speaker 1: Well to lay it on them, Well, the Civil War
31:47
Speaker 1: breaks out in eighteen sixty one, and the governor of Massachusetts,
31:51
Speaker 1: John A. Andrew was very much an abolitionist, and Tubbin
31:55
Speaker 1: was a friend of his, and he said, you know what,
31:59
Speaker 1: who do I know that is super stealthy and super
32:03
Speaker 1: sneaky and has a neck for uh making her way
32:08
Speaker 1: around the woods without attracting attention, and can get information
32:13
Speaker 1: from us about the Confederate Army. And how about my
32:16
Speaker 1: little buddy, Harriet Tubman. Yeah, and so she became a spy. Yeah.
32:22
Speaker 1: The governor of Massachusetts tapped her to become a spy
32:25
Speaker 1: for the Union Army. So he paid for her passage
32:28
Speaker 1: down to Hilton Head, I believe, South Carolina, and she
32:32
Speaker 1: um was enlisted officially under the cover story that she
32:37
Speaker 1: was there to um give out like blankets and food
32:40
Speaker 1: and clothing to the slaves that were escaping from in
32:44
Speaker 1: the amidst the chaos of war. There's a lot of
32:47
Speaker 1: slaves that were making their way to Union camps and
32:50
Speaker 1: finding shelter Um there and her role supposedly was to
32:55
Speaker 1: make sure that they were cared for that. Like I said,
32:58
Speaker 1: that was just a cover story. What she was actually
33:00
Speaker 1: really there to do was to basically lead an intelligence
33:04
Speaker 1: gathering scouting group, basically assemble a guerrilla scouting special forces
33:09
Speaker 1: group behind enemy lines in South Carolina. And that's what
33:14
Speaker 1: she did. Yeah. I wonder if any of the Union
33:16
Speaker 1: soldiers when she showed up and said, you know, I'm
33:19
Speaker 1: here to give out blankets and stuff, They're like, yeah, right,
33:22
Speaker 1: I know who you are, Right, we see those you
33:25
Speaker 1: see those muscles. Yeah, you're not giving up blankets. We
33:27
Speaker 1: know your your track record. Uh. So specifically she worked,
33:31
Speaker 1: it seems like most often with African American troops once
33:35
Speaker 1: Lincoln authorized African American troops for the Union Army in
33:40
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty two. She would go ahead of these teams
33:44
Speaker 1: and do everything from try and get information on Confederate
33:48
Speaker 1: positions and armaments to uh to working with these guys.
33:54
Speaker 1: In June sixty three, it's a really cool story, she
33:58
Speaker 1: accompanied Union Colonel James montgom Re up the Kambahi River
34:03
Speaker 1: and this was in South Carolina and they were going
34:05
Speaker 1: to conduct a raid. And so what they found out
34:08
Speaker 1: was there all these minds that had been set up
34:10
Speaker 1: uh by uh were they buy slaves or by um So,
34:16
Speaker 1: under the direction of the Confederates, they had slaves go
34:19
Speaker 1: set minds out in the river. And so she went
34:22
Speaker 1: and found the slaves who had set the minds there
34:25
Speaker 1: so they could tell her where it was. And that
34:27
Speaker 1: must have been nerve wracking. It was because not only
34:30
Speaker 1: did she go find out where it was, so that
34:32
Speaker 1: step one, which is huge, she went and got the
34:34
Speaker 1: intail where the minds were. She was in charge of
34:37
Speaker 1: leading directing the Union ships around these mines. So she
34:45
Speaker 1: I'm sure she has had her fingers across the whole time.
34:47
Speaker 1: But prior to that, even she had also led a
34:50
Speaker 1: raid of um this the scouts that she had assembled
34:54
Speaker 1: to gather intel and to get supplies behind Confederate lines
35:00
Speaker 1: from some sort of Confederate encampment. And that made her
35:02
Speaker 1: the first women woman in US history to command an
35:08
Speaker 1: expedition force in wartime. Yeah, but sadly, for all her efforts,
35:13
Speaker 1: she was never given military pension like she should have
35:17
Speaker 1: a federally that is no, so that's like a whole
35:20
Speaker 1: that's a whole other can of worms. Right, So she
35:22
Speaker 1: she successfully makes it through the Civil War um and
35:28
Speaker 1: starting right. I think in eighteen sixty five she applied
35:31
Speaker 1: for benefits, right um, she asked for something like thirty
35:35
Speaker 1: dollars a month. Even though scouts in the Civil War
35:38
Speaker 1: were paid sixty dollars a month and regular soldiers were
35:41
Speaker 1: given a pension of fifteen dollars a month, she asked
35:44
Speaker 1: for thirty um and she was denied. Officially, the reason
35:49
Speaker 1: she was denied was because there was no documentation. Remember, like,
35:52
Speaker 1: officially her cover story was that she was handing out
35:55
Speaker 1: blankets and all that. And that first petition for a
36:01
Speaker 1: pension started a thirty four year quest to finally get
36:07
Speaker 1: recognition in the form of a pension from the federal
36:09
Speaker 1: government for the amazing amount of stuff she did in
36:13
Speaker 1: the Civil War. And finally they despite the fact that
36:18
Speaker 1: there were Cabinet members and congress people and governors who
36:21
Speaker 1: were personally involving themselves in this matter, trying to get
36:24
Speaker 1: this pushed through the pensions Bureau, was like, we can't
36:27
Speaker 1: do it. If we give it to her, it's going
36:29
Speaker 1: to open it up for all these other people. So
36:31
Speaker 1: it just so happens that she she married a Civil
36:34
Speaker 1: War veteran um who was much younger than her and
36:39
Speaker 1: he when he died, she started collecting a pension. So
36:42
Speaker 1: she got a pension, not because of all of the
36:45
Speaker 1: stuff she did in the war. She got a pension
36:47
Speaker 1: because she married a Civil War veteran, a man who died,
36:51
Speaker 1: and she got a widows pension instead. Yeah, well, she
36:54
Speaker 1: would eventually go getting her own pension, but not for
36:57
Speaker 1: the work she does a spy, but for work she
36:59
Speaker 1: does an army nurse. Right, So they uped it finally
37:02
Speaker 1: in eight thirty four years after she applied from I
37:07
Speaker 1: think twelve dollars a month to now eight dollars a
37:11
Speaker 1: month to twenty dollars a month was what she got
37:14
Speaker 1: for the rest of her life. Yeah, and guess guess
37:16
Speaker 1: who she spent that money on Philadelphia Eagles tickets. No,
37:23
Speaker 1: she's she's spent it to open up a home. Uh. Well,
37:28
Speaker 1: she she bought some more property adjacent to her own
37:31
Speaker 1: property there in Auburn, New York, and she started home
37:34
Speaker 1: for elderly African American people. And seven years after that,
37:40
Speaker 1: she you know, she was kind of getting up in
37:41
Speaker 1: age by that point, so she turned the property over
37:44
Speaker 1: to the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church where she went
37:48
Speaker 1: uh and said you guys, can you please still run
37:50
Speaker 1: this thing? They said, no problem, And she lived next
37:53
Speaker 1: door to it until she got old enough to where
37:56
Speaker 1: she needed to be in the home that she founded,
37:58
Speaker 1: and that is where she finally passed away in nineteen thirteen. Yeah.
38:01
Speaker 1: The family legend is that on the day she died,
38:04
Speaker 1: she had been bedridden for a while, but she suddenly
38:08
Speaker 1: regained her strength and you know, got up out of
38:12
Speaker 1: bed with some help and ate some food and went
38:15
Speaker 1: around and the just kind of shuffled around from room
38:17
Speaker 1: to room, just taking in the house. Uh, and then
38:20
Speaker 1: went back to bed and died. Man. It's just pretty neat. Yeah.
38:24
Speaker 1: And in between that time, when she was living in
38:26
Speaker 1: upstate New York, she uh, you know, she farmed and
38:31
Speaker 1: she uh, by all accounts, was like a was a
38:35
Speaker 1: great farmer and lived off the land. Uh. And you know,
38:39
Speaker 1: the life was okay for her. But she also had
38:41
Speaker 1: had a lot of you know, fresh out off of
38:43
Speaker 1: the Civil War, had a lot of rude awakenings. It's
38:46
Speaker 1: not like things instantaneously changed, uh for African Americans in
38:50
Speaker 1: the United States. UM. One case, in fact, she was
38:53
Speaker 1: on a train and she had what's called the soldiers
38:56
Speaker 1: pass which she could, you know, ride the rails for
38:58
Speaker 1: free as a soldier. And she legitimately got this pass
39:01
Speaker 1: and the train conductor wouldn't accept it. Uh. She got
39:04
Speaker 1: into an argument with them, and then he got together
39:07
Speaker 1: with other passengers and physically threw her into the baggage car,
39:11
Speaker 1: which broke her arm, broke three ribs. She couldn't work
39:14
Speaker 1: for months, and you know, famous Harriet Tubman had basically
39:20
Speaker 1: was forced to be bedridden for a while except handouts
39:23
Speaker 1: from her neighbors just to keep her family fed because
39:27
Speaker 1: she had had her arm and ribs broken at the
39:29
Speaker 1: hands of a conductor and that horribly ironic. Yes, so
39:36
Speaker 1: that happened right after the Civil War, right, Uh yeah,
39:39
Speaker 1: So she was nursed back to health and and like
39:41
Speaker 1: you said, she made ends meet um farming, um selling.
39:46
Speaker 1: I think she was known for selling pies and root
39:49
Speaker 1: beer and gingerbread is what she sold, which is pretty
39:53
Speaker 1: happy stuff really if you think about it. I bet
39:55
Speaker 1: that was some good gingerbread and um she lived with
39:58
Speaker 1: her parents. Remember her mom complained ab out the weather
40:01
Speaker 1: in St. Catharines, Ontario. Um, so she moved them down
40:05
Speaker 1: to Auburn, New York, to her land and she cared
40:09
Speaker 1: for them. Uh. And she used some of the money
40:12
Speaker 1: to put one of her nephews, who she'd earlier helped
40:15
Speaker 1: escape from slavery through school. Uh. He studied to become
40:19
Speaker 1: a teacher and moved down to South Carolina and taught
40:22
Speaker 1: and he eventually became part of the reconstructionist legislature there. Um.
40:27
Speaker 1: She used her money pretty wisely. Yes, she opened the
40:29
Speaker 1: Old Folks Home. She did a lot of really great
40:31
Speaker 1: stuff from from the day she first got paid to
40:35
Speaker 1: the last day of her life. Yeah, she got married
40:39
Speaker 1: again too. She married a man Union Army veteran named
40:43
Speaker 1: Nelson Davis. Uh, twenty two years younger than her. Yeah,
40:47
Speaker 1: that's the guy she got the pension from. Right, and
40:50
Speaker 1: they married in eighteen sixty nine. And on her gravestone
40:53
Speaker 1: it says Harriet Tubman Davis. And Um. She ended up
40:57
Speaker 1: being buried with full military honors at four Hill Cemetery
41:00
Speaker 1: in Auburn, which is really really great. Uh. They commissioned
41:05
Speaker 1: a liberty ship, the s S. Harriet Tubman during World
41:09
Speaker 1: War Two. Um, she's been in Um. Well, they're developing
41:13
Speaker 1: a couple of movies right now, one with Viola Davis,
41:16
Speaker 1: which you know she's fantastic, so that should be good.
41:20
Speaker 1: What else? National Historic Landmarks from where she lived? Um,
41:24
Speaker 1: National Register of Historic Places. And then finally, in a
41:28
Speaker 1: couple of years ago, President Obama and his administration said,
41:32
Speaker 1: you know what, we are going to take Andrew Jackson
41:35
Speaker 1: off the twenty dollar bill and we're gonna put Harriet
41:37
Speaker 1: Tubman on it. Uh. And it's hard to tell if
41:41
Speaker 1: that's still an active thing, because all we know right
41:44
Speaker 1: now is current Treasury Secretary Steve Nuncheon UM basically is
41:49
Speaker 1: declining comment right now and saying we got a lot
41:51
Speaker 1: of other stuff to focus on. I saw follow up
41:54
Speaker 1: two weeks later. That's the latest I saw, but two
41:57
Speaker 1: weeks after he initially said that UM, they were proceeding,
42:02
Speaker 1: that it was basically going through, but that it wouldn't
42:04
Speaker 1: be out until after because I think the ten dollar
42:09
Speaker 1: bill and then the five dollar bill were scheduled to
42:11
Speaker 1: be updated first, and then the twenty dollar bill. So
42:13
Speaker 1: she's in the queue. She's in the queue, yeah, for sure.
42:17
Speaker 1: And she that won't be the first time she's appeared
42:19
Speaker 1: on anything. She was UM on a stamp, I believe
42:24
Speaker 1: back in nineteen seventy nine. I think she might have
42:26
Speaker 1: been the first African American woman on a stamp. YEP,
42:32
Speaker 1: it's pretty pretty significant. But her being on currency is
42:36
Speaker 1: just that's just a sea change in America and wanted
42:38
Speaker 1: to be proud of for sure. Um, so what else? Man?
42:43
Speaker 1: You got anything else on her? I got nothing else.
42:45
Speaker 1: That's Harriet Tubman in a nutshell. God bless her. If
42:51
Speaker 1: you want to know more about Harriet Tubman, there's tons
42:54
Speaker 1: more stuff out there. There's actually really good site that
42:56
Speaker 1: we both used called I think Harriet dashed Codman dot org.
43:02
Speaker 1: Don't spell out. I think that was just me saying
43:04
Speaker 1: that they have a lot of really good information on there.
43:07
Speaker 1: You can look for this article on how stuff works
43:10
Speaker 1: dot com by typing in the search bar too. And
43:12
Speaker 1: since I said search parts, time for listener mail? Uh,
43:18
Speaker 1: you know instead of listener mail today we need to
43:20
Speaker 1: shout out our CIVA team because we have not done
43:22
Speaker 1: that in a long time and now we've been kind
43:25
Speaker 1: of neglectful. So k I v a dot org slash
43:29
Speaker 1: team slash stuff you should know, or you can just
43:31
Speaker 1: go to Cuba and look up on the teams. UM
43:34
Speaker 1: many years ago, we started Freezy. Don't those of you
43:38
Speaker 1: who don't know. Kiva is a micro lending organization and
43:42
Speaker 1: website where you can um donate money and small amounts
43:46
Speaker 1: to entrepreneurs and business people all over the world who
43:51
Speaker 1: who don't have the means to to raise money themselves
43:55
Speaker 1: for their small businesses. And then you can re lend
43:58
Speaker 1: that money once they pay it back, or you can
44:01
Speaker 1: draw it out if you want to draw it out.
44:03
Speaker 1: So we started a team many years ago, UM, and
44:06
Speaker 1: I haven't looked in a while, and I was astonished.
44:09
Speaker 1: Have you seen what we've raised? All? Right, hold onto
44:13
Speaker 1: your hats the stuff you should know. Team has now
44:16
Speaker 1: raised four point seven million bucks. What how about that?
44:21
Speaker 1: That's amazing. That is a hundred and sixty nine thousand
44:24
Speaker 1: loans uh, nine thousand, nine hundred and twelve members. And
44:28
Speaker 1: just to give you guys an idea of how this works, UM,
44:31
Speaker 1: I put in and this was what was this eight
44:35
Speaker 1: eight or nine years ago? Put in three d and
44:38
Speaker 1: fifty bucks, uh, the only money I've ever put into it.
44:43
Speaker 1: And since then that money has been reloaned to the
44:46
Speaker 1: tune of twenty three hundred dollars over the years. So
44:50
Speaker 1: you can even put in fifty dollars and just keep
44:52
Speaker 1: reloaning that over the years and through all those eight years,
44:57
Speaker 1: I looked at my account today, I've only had forty
44:59
Speaker 1: two dollars in loss. Is that is not bad, not
45:01
Speaker 1: bad at all. So that's money that does not get
45:04
Speaker 1: paid back and it, as you can tell, that does
45:06
Speaker 1: not happen much. Yeah. Yeah, uh, And if you want
45:10
Speaker 1: to join our team, go to kiva dot org slash
45:13
Speaker 1: teams slash stuff you should know and uh that team
45:18
Speaker 1: is our team has led unofficially slash officially by Glenn
45:22
Speaker 1: and Sonja who keep things going pretty smoothly for us
45:26
Speaker 1: over there. So thanks again Glenn and Sonia for everything
45:28
Speaker 1: you've been doing all these years. Yeah. So I think
45:30
Speaker 1: a goal we can set right now. We always set
45:33
Speaker 1: money goals, but since we have nine thousand and twelve members,
45:36
Speaker 1: why don't we try and get to ten thousand members?
45:40
Speaker 1: And that is not much, that's like, you know, less
45:42
Speaker 1: than a hundred people signing onto the team, leaning a
45:45
Speaker 1: little bit of dough, let's do. Let's do so ten
45:48
Speaker 1: thousand members by the end by the summer, by June one. Yeah,
45:53
Speaker 1: that should be easy. And one trillion dollars by June
45:57
Speaker 1: one as well. That would be great. And it's really cool.
46:00
Speaker 1: You can see if you go to your account, you
46:02
Speaker 1: can they have follow ups from people who you loan
46:05
Speaker 1: the money to, like real stories of what happened with
46:07
Speaker 1: your money. Uh, and they're always just great stories. And
46:10
Speaker 1: it's a really easy way if you have, um, you know,
46:15
Speaker 1: five cups of coffee worth of money laying around. Yeah,
46:19
Speaker 1: it's a donated Yeah. And if you want to know
46:21
Speaker 1: more about it, we've blogged about it extensively. So goes
46:24
Speaker 1: the Stuff you Should Know dot com and look up
46:26
Speaker 1: Kiva and it should bring up a bunch of posts
46:28
Speaker 1: and um for a good I think overview to just
46:31
Speaker 1: go listen to the micro lending episode from back in
46:34
Speaker 1: the day too. That's right. Well, Uh, if you want
46:37
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us, you can. You can
46:40
Speaker 1: do that. You can do it on Twitter at s
46:42
Speaker 1: Y s K podcast or at Josh M. Clark can
46:45
Speaker 1: do it on Facebook, Facebook dot com, slash stuff you
46:48
Speaker 1: Should Know or slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant. You can
46:53
Speaker 1: send all of us an email. The Stuff podcast at
46:55
Speaker 1: how Stuffworks dot com and has always joined us at
46:58
Speaker 1: our home on the web Stuff you Should Know com
47:05
Speaker 1: for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
47:07
Speaker 1: it how stuff works? Dot com mhm m