Harriet Tubman frees 750 slaves

1863 USA: African-American freedom-fighter Harriet Tubman (‘Black Moses’; 1820 - 1913) freed 750 slaves in a raid. She and former slave James Montgomery led 300 African American troops of the Union's Second South Carolina Volunteers on a raid of plantations along the Combahee River. Backed by three gun boats, Tubman’s forces set fire to the plantations and freed 750 slaves.

An escaped slave herself, she worked as a guerrilla, farmhand, lumberjack, laundress and cook, refugee organizer, raid leader and intelligence commander, nurse and healer, revival speaker, feminist and fundraiser, all as part of the struggle for liberation from slavery and racism.

John Brown was to refer to her as "General Tubman" and called her "one of the bravest persons on this continent". Frederick Douglass said of her, "Excepting John Brown ... I know of no one who has willingly encountered more perils and hardships to serve our enslaved people" ...

Categories: usa, history, biography, activism