Who was Harriet Tubman?
Born into slavery in Dorchester County, Maryland, around 1822, Araminta Ross took the name Harriet Tubman. She escaped to Philadelphia in 1849.
Over the following decade she returned to Maryland about thirteen times, guiding around seventy people, including family members, to freedom along the Underground Railroad.
During the Civil War she served the Union Army as a scout, spy and nurse, and helped lead the 1863 Combahee River Raid that freed more than 700 enslaved people. She later campaigned for women's suffrage and died in Auburn, New York, in 1913.