[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 148 (Monday, December 8, 2014)]
[House]
[Page H8823]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     HONORING HARRIET TUBMAN'S LIFE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from New 
York (Mr. Maffei) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. MAFFEI. Mr. Speaker, in this Nation's great history, the life of 
Harriet Ross Tubman is certainly a life worth recognition by this 
Congress and this country.
  Harriet Tubman, born Araminta Ross in 1822, dedicated her life to the 
emancipation movement as a leader of the Underground Railroad that 
provided enslaved African Americans a pathway to freedom in the North. 
She served for the Union Army during the Civil War and as a caregiver 
for the elderly by establishing the Tubman Home for the Aged in Auburn, 
New York, where she lived out her life.
  She suffered from traumatic brain injury throughout her life after 
she was hit as a teenager with a heavy weight by a slave overseer who 
was trying to subdue another enslaved person. She was an advocate for 
women's rights and worked to get women the vote. After settling in 
Auburn, she dedicated much of her life and effort to the African 
Methodist Episcopal Zion Church there.
  In 2008, the National Park Service completed a special resource study 
to determine the most appropriate way to recognize the life of Harriet 
Tubman. The Park Service eventually came to the conclusion that a park 
should include two geographically separate units. One would be a 
tightly clustered set of buildings in Auburn, New York, and the other 
would include large sections of landscape that are evocative of 
Tubman's life both as a slave and as a conductor of the Underground 
Railroad on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.
  The Harriet Tubman National Historical Parks Act, which I introduced, 
aims to further commemorate the life of Harriet Tubman by establishing 
the Harriet Tubman National Historical Park in Auburn and the Harriet 
Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park in Dorchester 
County, Maryland.
  Harriet Tubman Historical Park is located in Auburn, New York, and 
the part of that that includes historical structures like the Tubman 
home, the Tubman Home for the Aged, the AME Zion Church that she went 
to, and the Fort Hill Cemetery where she is buried.
  Mr. Speaker, last week this House passed legislation as part of the 
armed services authorization bill to establish a park in Tubman's 
honor. This week I hope the Senate will also pass this legislation and 
send it to President Obama for his signature.
  It is completely appropriate that this provision should be included, 
for, though not as well known as her activity on the Underground 
Railroad, Harriet Tubman was one of our first African American women 
military veterans. She volunteered her time and efforts, traveling to 
the South to help the Union war effort by helping fugitives and serving 
as a nurse to Union soldiers in Port Royal, South Carolina.

                              {time}  1215

  Eventually she was leading bands of scouts through the land around 
Port Royal, where her ability to travel unseen and fool her adversaries 
made her an ideal spy. Her group, working under the orders of the 
Secretary of War, made maps and collected important intelligence that 
aided the Union capture of Jacksonville, Florida.
  Subsequently, Tubman became the first woman to lead an armed assault 
during the Civil War. When Union Colonel James Montgomery and his 
troops attacked plantations along the Combahee River, Tubman went with 
them and guided three steamboats around confederate mines in the waters 
leading to the shore. More than 750 enslaved African Americans were 
rescued in the Combahee River raid and, according to the newspapers at 
the time, most of those newly liberated men went on to join the Union 
Army, largely due to Tubman's recruiting efforts.
  Mr. Speaker, Harriet Tubman lived for freedom and worked hard to 
extend freedom to hundreds of others. In doing so, she earned the 
Nation's respect and honor. A century after her death, I am proud to 
have worked so hard to establish a fitting memorial to her.
  I truly believe that Harriet Tubman's example of inner strength, 
persistence, her love of freedom, and her dedication to the Nation 
based on the principles of freedom makes her as relevant today as she 
was in her own time.
  Mr. Speaker, our time is filled with too much cynicism and people 
feeling powerless to do much to better our society. We should look to 
the example of Harriet Tubman, a true American patriot. She was someone 
for whom liberty and freedom were not just concepts but were principles 
worth working for and fighting for.
  According to Tubman's authorized biographer, Sarah Bradford, when 
Tubman had escaped from slavery in the Northern States, she said, ``I 
looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a 
glory over everything. The Sun came up like gold through the trees and 
over the fields, and I felt like I was in Heaven.''
  We, Mr. Speaker, should look to Harriet Tubman, an enslaved African 
American woman of slight physical stature and suffering from head 
trauma, and realize that the glory and heaven that is American freedom 
is there for us all if we are willing to work for it and to fight for 
it and to believe in it, as Harriet Tubman did.

                          ____________________