[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Pages 2428-2430]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




  HARRIET TUBMAN AND THE HARRIET TUBMAN UNDERGROUND RAILROAD NATIONAL 
                            HISTORICAL PARK

  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I rise to celebrate the life of Harriet 
Tubman and the establishment of the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad 
National Historical Park. Harriet Tubman was an American hero who 
championed freedom and was most famously known as a leader of the 
Underground Railroad whose roots were on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.
  Harriet Tubman was an iconic figure in our Nation's history for whom 
liberty and freedom were not just ideas but were God-given rights she 
fought tirelessly and at great personal peril to spread to others in 
bondage. The woman who is known to us as Harriet Tubman was born in 
approximately 1822 in Dorchester County, MD, and given the name 
Araminta ``Minty'' Ross. Born into slavery, she spent nearly 30 years 
of her life toiling for various families on Maryland's Eastern Shore.

[[Page 2429]]

  Even as a young, enslaved girl, she demonstrated impressive mental 
and physical strength. One of her jobs was to set and check muskrat 
traps in the swamps of the Blackwater River during blazing hot summers 
and freezing cold winters. Even though Harriet was slight in physical 
stature, she frequently worked with the men in the forest cutting 
timber and carrying logs.
  It was in this work setting, where both free and enslaved people 
worked together harvesting timber, that she first heard stories about 
what life was like for free Blacks in Northern States.
  As a teenaged slave, one of her first acts of defiance was sticking 
up for an enslaved boy who was being harassed by a shopkeeper. In 
helping the boy out of this situation, she took a serious blow to the 
head when the shopkeeper threw a lead weight that struck her in the 
head. Tubman recalled later in life that the mark of the weight on her 
skull never fully healed and after this incident she would see visions 
that later inspired her to escape slavery.
  As an adult she took the first name Harriet, and when she was 24 
years old she married John Tubman. In her late twenties, Harriet Tubman 
escaped from slavery in 1849. She fled in the dead of night, navigating 
the maze of tidal streams and wetlands that to this day comprise the 
Eastern Shore's landscape. She did so alone, demonstrating courage, 
strength, and fortitude that became her hallmark.
  Not satisfied with attaining her own freedom, she returned repeatedly 
for more than 10 years to places of her enslavement in Dorchester and 
Caroline Counties where, under the most adverse conditions, she led 
away many family members and other slaves to freedom in the 
Northeastern United States and Canada.
  She helped develop a complex network of safe houses and recruited 
abolitionist sympathizers residing along secret routes connecting the 
Southern slave States and Northern free States.
  No one knows exactly how many people she led to freedom or the number 
of trips between the North and the South she led, but the legend of her 
work was an inspiration to the multitude of slaves seeking freedom and 
to abolitionists fighting to end slavery. Tubman became known as the 
Moses of her people by African Americans and White abolitionists alike.
  Tubman once proudly told Frederick Douglass that in all her journeys 
she ``never lost a single passenger.'' She was so effective that in 
1856 there was a $40,000 reward offered for her capture in the South. 
She is the most famous and the most important conductor of the network 
of resistance known as the Underground Railroad.
  But Tubman was more than a conductor on the Underground Railroad. She 
was a scout and a spy for the Union Army, she was active in the women's 
suffrage movement after the Civil War, and ultimately she served aging 
African Americans by running a home for the aged in Auburn, NY.
  In 1903 she bequeathed the Tubman home to the African Methodist 
Episcopal Zion Church in Auburn, where it stands to this day. Just this 
month I was able to attend the midwinter meeting of the Board of 
Bishops/International Ministers and Lay Association of the AME Zion 
Church, where we honored Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, and 
Harriet Tubman.
  The AME Zion Church, or the ``Freedom Church,'' as many refer to it, 
was an important part of Harriet Tubman's life and was involved in the 
forefront of both the abolition and civil rights movements. She was a 
dedicated member of the church and actively supported the construction 
of the Thompson AME Church in Auburn, NY, where she lay in state after 
her death. Harriet Tubman died in Auburn in 1913, and she is buried in 
the Fort Hill Cemetery.
  Fortunately, many of the structures and landmarks in New York remain 
intact, in relatively good condition. For the past 7 years, I have 
championed legislation to establish the creation of the Harriet Tubman 
Historical Parks in Maryland and New York. The creation of these parks 
has been years in the making and long overdue, and I am very grateful 
for the support my colleagues gave this bill in the last Congress.
  Recently I was able to celebrate this park's formal designation 
during a ceremonial event at the Harriet Tubman Museum and Educational 
Center in Cambridge, MD, just a few miles from where she grew up. I was 
able to meet some of Harriet Tubman's descendants, which was incredibly 
meaningful to me.
  I am so pleased Harriet Tubman's legacy will live on in these parks. 
My cosponsors and I all share a deep appreciation for how establishing 
this park is preserving the legacy of this remarkable historic figure 
in American history and will also show how important this park will be 
to communities where they are located.
  Every February our Nation's children learn lessons about the many 
contributions African Americans have made to our democracy and to the 
growth and prosperity of our Nation. Preserving places significant to 
Harriet Tubman's life story for future generations creates a learning 
opportunity that our kids and grandkids can't get in the classroom or 
learn from a textbook.
  The park will educate the public about the historical significance of 
the Underground Railroad and Harriet Tubman's early life and also is 
expected to increase tourism, create jobs, and strengthen local 
economies.
  The final passage of this bill to create the park was the result of 
an unyielding bipartisan effort, including Representative Andy Harris, 
Senator Mikulski, and me, along with our partners from New York, 
Senators Schumer, Gillibrand, and former Secretary Clinton when she 
represented New York in this body, along with Congressmen Dan Maffei 
and Richard Hanna.
  This was a bipartisan effort and involved Members from both New York 
and Maryland. The effort on this legislative work was started by my 
predecessor, Senator Sarbanes, when he passed legislation commissioning 
the national service to conduct a special resource study on Harriet 
Tubman.
  The establishment of the national historical park commemorating the 
life of Harriet Tubman and protecting the serene and almost untouched 
landscape is an ideal way to celebrate and honor the outstanding life 
and incredible work of Harriet Tubman, while establishing an important 
destination for tourists to come visit, learn, and experience 
Maryland's Eastern Shore.
  The vision for the Tubman National Historical Parks is to preserve 
the places significant to the life of Harriet Tubman and tell her story 
through interpretive activities, while continuing to discover aspects 
of her life and the experiences of passage along the Underground 
Railroad through archaeological research and discovery.
  The buildings and structures in Maryland have mainly disappeared. 
Slaves were forced to live in primitive buildings even though many 
slaves were skilled tradesmen who constructed the substantial homes of 
their owners.
  Not surprising, few of the structures associated with the early years 
of Tubman's life remain standing today. The landscape of the Eastern 
Shore of Maryland, however, is still evocative of the time when Harriet 
Tubman lived there. Farm fields and loblolly pine forests dot the 
lowland landscape, which is also notable for its extensive network of 
tidal rivers and wetlands that Tubman and the people she guided to 
freedom used under cover of night. In particular, a number of places 
significant to Tubman's life--including the homestead of Ben Ross, her 
father; Stewart's Canal, where he worked; the Brodess Farm, where she 
worked as a slave; and others--are within the master plan boundaries of 
the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge. Similarly, Poplar Neck, the 
plantation from which she escaped, is still largely intact in Caroline 
County. The properties in Talbot County, immediately across the 
Choptank River from the plantation, are currently protected by various 
conservation easements. Were she alive today, Tubman would recognize 
much of the landscape that she knew intimately as she secretly led 
freedom seekers of all ages to the North. This park helps connect 
people today to America's history.

[[Page 2430]]

  Only recently has the Park Service begun establishing units dedicated 
to the lives of African Americans. Places such as Booker T. Washington 
National Monument on the campus of Tuskegee University in Alabama, the 
George Washington Carver National Monument in Missouri, the National 
Historic Trail commemorating the march for voting rights from Selma to 
Montgomery, and most recently the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial on 
the Mall are all important monuments and places of historical 
significance that help tell the story of the African-American 
experience.
  As the National Park Service continues its important work to 
commemorate and preserve African-American history by providing greater 
public access and information about the places and people who have 
shaped the African-American experience, there are very few units 
dedicated to the lives of African-American women. This historic park is 
the first national park in honor of a woman--obviously the first 
historical park for an African-American woman.
  As we celebrate Black history this month and women's history next 
month, I cannot think of a more fitting hero than Harriet Tubman to be 
the first African-American woman to be memorialized with national 
historical parks. These parks tell both her personal story and her 
lifelong fight for justice and freedom, from her fight against the 
cruel institution of slavery and the establishment of the Underground 
Railroad that she led, to her work in the women's suffrage movement.
  I encourage my colleagues to seek inspiration from the heroes of 
their own States and work to preserve the physical remnants of their 
legacy so that future generations of Americans might better know who 
helped form this great Nation.
  Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cruz). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.

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