The Courage of Harriet Tubman and The Underground Railroad

The Breathtaking Courage of Harriet Tubman is a wonderful animation from TED-Ed that details a brief history of the legendary heroine Harriet Tubman.

You’ve most likely heard of Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad, which oddly sounds like a good name for a band but is, in fact, one of the greatest success stories in American history. While it’s true that Tubman didn’t create the Underground Railroad, she certainly helped refine it and led many, many slaves to freedom.

For the few of you who have no idea what the Underground Railroad was, it was a system of safe houses, transportation methods, and trails that allowed slaves to hide out while en route from the South up into Canada. Tubman would travel the system (which, just so we’re clear, was not, in fact, an actual railroad) 13 times. It would’ve been so easy to stop after successfully completing her first trip to Canada, but she felt she had an obligation to help others, especially her family.

Even if you know all about Tubman’s journeys later in life, you may not be aware that she was not originally born Harriet Tubman or that she experienced ‘visions’ as a result of an injury that gave her narcolepsy. Find out what inspired Tubman to become the woman we still celebrate to this day:

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